


Where On This Earth

by Golden_Ticket



Category: Figure Skating RPF
Genre: AU, Action, Crime AU, F/M, Human Trafficking, Mutual Pining, Mystery, Romance, Sex Trafficking, Thriller, a foray into the slightly more serious, action thriller romance AU, secret agents, some depictions of violence but none too graphic, tw: sex trafficking
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-21
Updated: 2018-11-18
Packaged: 2019-07-15 04:34:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 25,334
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16055645
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Golden_Ticket/pseuds/Golden_Ticket
Summary: He thought he'd lost her. Now she's back. And she brought danger.***When in the summer after, once Kate had finally decided it was time, they put an empty casket into the ground of the Virtue family plot, they had trapped a part of Scott’s heart in the damp soil, too. He knows, looking over the terrifyingly beautiful Hawaiian landscape, that he will never get this part back. It’s going to wander the earth restlessly looking for Tessa, never reaching her. Only finding these senses of her, traces at places like this where she speaks to him.***aka The VM Crime-Thriller-Adventure-Romance nobody asked for.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Friends. This is merely a little taste of what is to come. I wanted to share early to motivate me and gauge interest a little bit.
> 
> I will first finish What's Love (and please forgive me the nod to it in the hilariously pretentious mock-up book cover I made for this, I was feeling funny) until I will continue on this but I am excited about this new story and I hope you are, too.
> 
> So you'll get What's Love finished first, then this and then BALANCE! and hopefully soon an update for Hallelujah as well :)
> 
> TW: Nothing bad happens in this chapter but there will be the subject matter of human and sex trafficking dealt with in this story, as well as moderate descriptions of violence, as appropriate for the genre. If that isn't your cup of tea, I do not blame you for sitting it out. 
> 
> ...for those that like the gritty stuff here and there, strap in for a taste and then hopefully join me later for the rest <3

* * *

 

 

**ONE**

 

Scott had pictured the trail a little differently. Not that he hadn’t expected tourists, but he hadn’t expected the whole way up to the “Top Insider Tip” for the “Top Scenic View” on the island of Oahu, Hawaii, to feel like following his small town’s Fall parade along their path. It’s a circus. There he is, walking with his really quite superfluous backpack that makes sweat gather at the small of his back, and a stone’s throw ahead and behind him, are people. And ahead and behind them, are even more people. There are screaming children, nagging elderly, gossipping college kids. And Scott Moir, who had imagined peace and quiet. A nice, if steep, walk up to Hanauma Bay Ridge to find that promised most scenic view in all of Honolulu. A trail to reminisce and give the occasion the gravity it deserves. Instead, he is on a party trek with a busload worth of others, infringing on his moment.

But what else is he to do? He promised his buddies he would join them back at the beach no later than six in the evening and it’s already pushing three. He has to get it done today and so he sucks it up and keeps walking. At the next trail mark, there’s an info board that indicates an extra path leading away from the main hiking road, warning about steep cliffs and rocky terrain, and as Scott catches his own eye in the reflective surface of the map, he decides that’s his next move.

His hazel eyes are squinting at him, his reflection hazy, but knowledge fills in what vision can’t reveal of his looks at the moment. He has bright green flakes in his irises that flare up in adamant sunshine like this. In the right light, it sometimes even makes them look golden, at least that’s what he’d been told a million years ago by a freckled little girl with too big of an imagination. He’s been on Oahu for three days but his light skin has already tanned to a rich honey glow—at least on the spots where he has applied enough sunscreen. His cheeks and the tip of his long and pointy, slightly aquiline nose are burned red. It’s bad enough that he put on his Detroit Tigers baseball cap over his pitch dark hair to make sure his skin doesn’t start peeling. Still, now that he has grown out his hair so much that it has started curling in the back of his neck, he sweats profusely under that stupid hat, which only adds to his general displeasure of this whole excursion he’s planned for today.

It’s a small blessing, but a blessing nonetheless, that once he sets out on the steeper, more dangerous trail, the crowd around him thins significantly. Once he’s walked for another half hour, the ocean view beside him still as breathtaking as it has been since he stepped off the plane, he feels decidedly better about his endeavour. Yes, his bones are wary from the climbing, his feet sore from tripping over rocks, but he doesn’t mind so much now. He’s thirty-one, it’s good to put some strain on his body every now and again before he truly gets old. The most important thing is that up ahead in the distance, he thinks he has spotted the perfect place with the perfect view over Hanauma Bay that will make the fitting end to his journey. _She’d like it here_ , he thinks confidently, and that is his usual cue to know it’s time to stop walking.

No matter if it’s Vegas, LA, Tuscany, Croatia or Iceland, wherever he travels, he always knows once he’s found the right spot. It isn’t so much his own preferences, it’s something about the places that speak to him of _her._ That’s where he’ll sit down and rest. It isn’t going to be long now, just a couple more metres along the hill, until the trail slopes down onto a precipice that he is careful not to fall down from. Above him and a little ways away, there are still people walking about, taking in the rich view and lush nature just as he is. But they are far away enough for him to ignore. He puts his backpack to the side, gingerly sits down and unfolds his legs in front of him while he leans against the volcanic rock at his back. And breathes.

It’s _fucking_ beautiful. Ahead of him, the busy bay is a perfect crescent shape, the sea below a rich turquoise and crawling with visitors, the waves audible even here, hundreds of metres above where the water hits the pearly white shore. When he looks up, he can trace the edge of the island all the way to the large mountain ahead, he guesses that it too, must’ve been a volcano once, or maybe it still is, but he isn’t sure. It doesn’t really matter either way, it’s so pretty, he gets lost in the view.

For once, a seldom occurrence, he doesn’t feel the need to know everything. To be able to name all the shapes and sights before him, to understand exactly why the world turns as it does, why certain things happen. He’s never had much luck figuring out the latter part anyway. He exhales, long and languid and settles in further, pondering. He has never been able to figure out why a fifteen year old girl vanished, apparently out of thin air, one day in late September, just weeks after his own seventeenth birthday, and was never seen again. He had grown up in a deeply religious family, but after that day, he’d never looked at a cross the same way. He never understood why God would take someone as innocent and wonderful as Tessa Virtue and steal her from her family, from her life, and get rid of her. That had never made sense and Scott is convinced that he will never figure out why it had to happen. Fourteen years later and it’s still elusive.

Lost to his thoughts, he unzips his backpack and digs out his store-bought water bottle, finishes what is left of the liquid inside, and then puts the empty plastic back into his back but keeps the cap to chew at it. When he starts talking quietly, it’s past the grinding of his jaw, his voice slightly high-pitched and nasal, not pushed down to carry since he’s alone and there is no one to hear him.

“I hope you like this spot, T,” he says to the wind. He stopped talking to her long ago but on these particular days of his travels, he allows himself the indulgence. “I tried to find somewhere quiet, so that the other people don’t annoy you. I think you’d agree with me here.” Tessa had never been big on crowds. “It’s beautiful here, not just here, the whole island. I’m really glad I could come. Catherine’s Dad paid for the trip, can you believe it? They’re really so stellar, the whole family. You’d like them, I think. Really stand-up people. Even if they’re stinking rich.” He’s rambling now but he has no intention of stopping.

“I’m a bit nervous to marry into that, you know,” he says. “Because I will, I’m getting married, T. Catherine is great, really funny. Looks nothing like you, that’s the first thing Danny said after he met her.” Scott’s older brothers Danny and Charlie had been worried about him for years, saying that he couldn’t keep living in the past, couldn’t keep going out to chat up women that vaguely looked like the girl he’d lost when his voice had barely broken in hopes to fill the void she had left behind. He hadn’t listened until the day he’d met Catherine.

But meeting her had changed a lot of things. He’d been at the supermarket, going down a list his mother had given him, to shop for the family Thanksgiving dinner, knocking on pumpkins.

“What are you doing?” A girlish voice had asked, inquisitively, from over by the zucchinis.

“Trying to figure out which ones are ripe,” Scott had answered before he even turned around. Once he did, and saw long honey blonde hair and lively blue eyes twinkle back at him, he was at a loss of words for a second.

The next time when he was at a loss was when they stood in front of the assorted cheeses and she told him she was nineteen. That had been six years ago. For the first year of knowing Catherine, Scott who was 25 going on 26, had tried to stay away from her, waiting at least until she turned 20 to ask her out on a proper date. What followed, one year later, was a whirlwind romance which ended abruptly seven months in when Catherine declared she could not be with him and that she loved him but she just couldn’t. He’d accepted it with real chagrin and was legitimately sad but he survived by the simple knowledge that he could indeed fall in love again with someone after Tessa. That his romantic life hadn’t ended the day Tessa’s Mom had called his to tell her that they’d called off the search for her daughter.

Half a year after Catherine had broken things off with him, he had ran into her at a mutual friends’ party, and at the end of it they had ended up in bed together and had been together since. Catherine has never said another word about their breakup and their relationship blossomed into one of the cornerstones of his life. Loving, fun and going strong and solid for years on end. Him asking her to marry her some four months ago had been little more than a formality. They are part of each other’s family. Catherine has seen three of his four nieces and nephews grow in their Mom’s tummies, Scott has been over for Sunday dinners at her parents house nearly every week of every year, getting their union in writing now is just sensible.

Yes, she isn’t Tessa but Tessa is gone and anyway, if she hadn’t gone missing all these years ago, Scott has no idea if they would have lasted, if they would still even know each other. Something tells him they would, but what good is it to dwell on that now? They had been kids when they fell in love and he isn’t a kid anymore. The girl of his dreams has been gone forever, probably faded to dust in a ditch somewhere, never found, never returned to the people who loved her. But that is life. It’s unfair and sometimes shitty things just happen for no reason.

“But you wouldn’t want me to be alone all my life, right?” Scott asks the wind, the breeze from the ocean smelling like salt and sea, and pockets his water bottle cap to chew more on later. “You’d want me to be happy, T.”

“I always want you to be happy,” she says in his head. He doesn’t remember if she ever said something like that to him. He realised in a fit a couple of years ago that he doesn’t really remember her voice at the top of his head anymore. There are some short videos her Mom still has that they used to watch together on Tessa’s birthday before his life got really hectic, what with work and moving in with Catherine three years ago, but even on those, Tessa sounds a bit like a smurf, all high and tiny and he’s not all the way sure she ever sounded like that when she talked to him. Sometimes, he even forgets her face, leaving just a concept of her: freckles and chestnut brown, sort of mouse-ish hair. She had dyed it a garish, terrible red the year she disappeared. It wasn’t a good shade for her but she was the most beautiful girl he had ever seen anyway.

Thinking back on it, her face comes into sharper view in his head, the high, dignified cheekbones, her sharp, skinny face that was a perfect oval next to his squarely angled jaw, the lively, giant green eyes over a slanted but adorable nose and a bright grin that could light up their whole county. When she’d laughed at his jokes, it had always been full bodied, roaring and _loud_ , way too loud for her gangly, slender body. He had loved her with every fiber of his being. Even back then, it had felt like a love several sizes too big for his young heart, too grown-up for the cocky, idiot kid that he was. But he had contained it in his chest, had made room for it. He had matured around that love for her and had done so completely unaware of it being reciprocated.

About two months after he learned to his infinite joy that it was, Tessa Virtue went missing and was officially pronounced dead a year later. When in the summer after, once Kate had finally decided it was time, they put an empty casket into the ground of the Virtue family plot, they had trapped a part of Scott’s heart in the damp soil, too. He knows, looking over the terrifyingly beautiful Hawaiian landscape, that he will never get this part back. It’s going to wander the earth restlessly looking for Tessa, never reaching her. Only finding these senses of her, traces at places like this where she speaks to him.

Before her ‘funeral’, her mother had asked him if he wanted any of her things to remember her by and Scott had picked some photos and a box of bracelets. Twisting his back that has gone stiff from the lack of movement, he digs around in the front pocket of his jeans to fish out one of them, putting it in his palm to study it once more. He’s picked a turquoise one, fitting for the scenery, he’d figured, the beads perfect, smooth balls, the same as the ones on his own wrist. She had given him his as a token of friendship, back when they’d still dangled on the edge of it, neither of them brave enough to admit that they hadn’t been _friends_ for a long time at that point. She’d been obsessed with those bracelets, these karma beads, power bracelet fad trend that had swept through classrooms in the early 2000s. At around the time of her disappearance, she’d worn about four to six of them on every arm.

The one she’d given to him is dark brown, with a faux marble finish and has tiny chinese symbols on it, most of which have long since faded, there are only a few left now and Scott has no idea what they mean. Not that it matters. What matters is that ever since Kate had given him Tessa’s complete collection, each time he travels, at home in Canada or around the world, he takes one of them with him and leaves it at the nicest places he can find. Because she had always wanted to travel, to see the world, and she never got to. This way, there is a little piece of her that still got there, that he could bring her to. He makes a fist around the band, squeezing tight until his palm is wet and sticky, and finally opens it again to touch his lips to it softly, turn over his shoulder and gently tuck it into a crevice in the rocks behind him. He shoves it in deep, pinching it between the edges of the nearly black stone so that it won’t come loose from rain or wind.

“There,” he mutters. “The perfect view.” As if the beads were her eyes and he wonders briefly if the other bracelets are still overlooking the spots he chose for her: the dense woods on the isle of Lokrum, the street canyons of NYC below Top Of The Rocks, the ocean from the Sunset Strip, Machu Picchu in Peru and the Niagara Falls, even if she had seen those with her own eyes. It still had felt right to leave one there. Scott leans back once again, takes another deep breath and checks his phone for the time. He’ll be fine to stay for another five minutes or so, but then he has to get back down to find his friends. There’s still bachelor party shenanigans to be had and his work here is done.

***

If the trail had been busy, Kuhio Beach, which Scott’s buddies have picked to lounge around at while he was away, is an ant colony. There is barely space for him to place his feet as he walks between half naked people on towels, trying to find the beach bar Adam texted him they were at. It takes him half an hour just to navigate around the narrow strip of beach to finally find the Leafs shirt that Adam chose to be his outfit for the day, a big white “Clark” on the signature bright indigo, shining in the sun like a road sign for Scott to follow. Around Adam’s broad back in a gaggle, are Scott’s other friends. The stocky, blonde Mike, lanky Kevin who has already lost all his hair, Jude, ginger and burned to a crisp.

And James, his future brother in law, who towers above them all, large and muscled, possibly the most handsome man Scott knows in real life and the reason why he will face no temptation on this last big hurrah before getting married. All the female attention they get lands right on James’ square shoulders. Mostly because he is the only one who insists on walking around without a shirt at the bar, showing off his guns, while the other guys are sitting there bent over fruity umbrella’d cocktails in their shirts and shorts.

“Finally,” Mike hollers, the first one to see Scott’s approach. “Took you long enough!”

“Maybe if you had told me the beach was crawling with people, I’d have taken the main road,” Scott says in mock defense and nearly sticks out his tongue as he pulls up a chair from a vacant table nearby and plops down.

“If you hurry, you can still get the happy hour-priced cocktail,” Kevin mentions, handing over the single menu still on the table. As Scott diligently studies the list of drinks, Adam fills him in on what they’ve done while he was gone and what they have planned for later: a stroll through the downtown area where they have all those bars and clubs.

“And then we’ll get hammered,” Adam finishes and the others huff in agreement.

“Was your little hike nice?” James asks, stretching leisurely on his black rattan chair, making Scott deeply insecure about his body, the way the other man’s muscles roll under his skin, all firmed and shaped by hours upon hours in the gym. Not that Scott isn’t in shape. He’s an ice skating coach, his work is literally movement but he is nowhere near as defined or sinewy as Catherine’s brother. He wonders time and time again, looking at James, if he should work a little harder to be.

“It was nice, yeah,” Scott replies before going back to the menu and wondering if a Pina Colada has too many calories before he decides that it’s silly and he’s on vacation and he’s marrying a woman who has never once complained about his looks or the fact that he gets a little belly when it’s not skating season. His life is demanding enough without body image issues, thank you very much. He is fine just the way he is and that is that.

“I’ll have the Pina Colada, please,” he tells the waitress when she walks by and Kevin raises his own to him in camaraderie.

“What colour bracelet did you take this time?” his friend asks conversationally, they all know about Scott’s traveling habit.

“Green,” he tells them. “Like mint-y...for the ocean, you know.” They nod. And that’s it. Scott has long since stopped trying to explain to people that Tessa’s loss still cuts deep, that there is still not a single day that goes by that he doesn’t think about her at least once. They think it’s weird, like he should have moved on ages ago, so he doesn’t force the topic on anybody any more. He just lives with it.

“So, gentlemen,” he says instead. “For our exploration of the nightlife later, are we gonna do the full-tourist thing and walk into the club in flip flops and hiking boots or are we going back to the hotel to clean up?”

James snickers. “We’re not peasants, are we? My Dad didn’t splurge on this trip for us so we can flounce around here like clueless farm boys. Plus I got us the whole VIP shebang at the _Addiction_ tonight. So it’s classy pre-drinks and then classy Champagne.”

“Dude, why you keep forgetting that the rest of us aren’t obscenely rich?” Adam grumbles. “Have you seen my fucking wallet?”

“Oh, stop crying,” James grins. “You just each give me fifty bucks and you’re fine. After all, you only go to a bachelor’s trip to Hawaii once.”

“Unless you got some more sisters to marry,” Mike quips.

“No, just some more little brothers,” Scott shrugs. Catherine is the only girl in the family and aside from James who is older than her, there are Kenneth and Lewis who are younger, the latter still being in middle school. “But you could get with Ken if you’re gonna adjust your sexual preferences.”

Mike shrugs. “I might consider it, I do love the VIP lounge.” Everybody laughs, most of all James.

“Ken would never go for you,” Catherine's brother says. “You’re too tiny.”

By the time Scott gets his drink, the table roast has reached Adam and it is determined that none of them would stand a chance with very picky and particular Ken, should any of them discover their homosexuality after all.

“Well, that leaves just Scott marrying into money, then,” Kevin murmurs, deflated.

“Oh, come on now,” James shakes his head good-naturedly, flashing a pearly white, charming grin. “We’re not that rich. And the company is hard work. Nobody works harder than my father, you all know that. It’s not nothing to raise a restaurant chain from the ground up. We’re not some old money snobs.”

“I know, I know,” Kevin hurries, obviously not missing the slight defensive tone to their friends’ words. “I’m just pulling your leg, dude.” With that, they move on to different topics, namely the three busty women two tables over making eyes at theirs. But nothing comes off it, since James doesn’t seem to be in the mood to entertain them.

A couple hours and a shower later, Scott is wearing his best pressed pants and a light blue button down shirt with his sleeves rolled up. He’s trying to determine if he just feels like he has sweat stains on his armpits or if they’re really there, as they walk their little party down a busy Honolulu street. The sun has set a while ago but it’s still hot and humid out. He envies the guys they pass dressed in shorts and bathing trunks and anything light from tanks to shirts to nothing over it and he can tell his buddies feel the same. Still, they look like smart business men ready to meet an important client and he does like that a little bit. Wherever they pass, the hostesses standing by the menus displayed on stands along the streets ask them noisily to come inside and spend their money there but James presses on, looking like he has a plan.

It’s finally revealed in a slightly less busy street where he stops abruptly, checks his phone and nods at an inconspicuous black door.

“It’s a speakeasy,” he tells them proudly. “It’s a total insider tip. You need a password and everything.” With that, he crosses the distance to the threshold, the other guys looking on curiously and Scott feels excitement well up in his chest. He _loves_ speakeasy’s, the whole intrigue of secrecy, the covertness of it, the booze, too, which is mostly pretty friggin’ nice and the thinks he’ll go for a whiskey sour before James’ knock on the door is even answered.

“Password?” a gruff voice asks once it is.

“Lilacs,” James says routinely and just like that, the door is opened. He looks at the bachelor’s party over his shoulder and gives them a cocky grin. “Isn’t this neat?”

The others agree and follow him inside, Scott holding the door open for his friends, pondering if maybe they have a classic daiquiri as well and whether or not he should pick that over the whiskey sour. Adam is the last to duck in the door before him when Scott decides to just order two drinks when a sound breaks through his idle musings, turning the grip on the door in his hand into iron. It’s a laugh, loud and roaring, cutting through the early night, echoing through the street and making him whip his head around to find the source. That laugh is hitting him squarely in the chest and he has no idea why.

He squints, searching, and still holds the door but takes a step away, into the street again so he can determine whose throat it broke free from and there she is.

_Tessa._

And of course it’s not Tessa. How could it be? Tessa is dead. But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t see her occasionally. In very random places. Mostly when he walks down a street somewhere and thinks she’s there in the corner of his eye but it never _is_ her, when he checks again. Not-Tessa, is up ahead, chatting to a very scantily clad woman outside of what Scott presumes simply by her get-up is a strip club and he can’t help it, but he has to keep staring. Of course it’s not Tessa. But dammit, if she couldn’t be. There are striking differences he can make out from the distance, the raven dark hair for one and most importantly the flawless nose, not the “size too big” that she had always used to complain about. No, this isn’t his Tessa’s nose. But still. There is something about her, even from this distance, that reminds him so much of that first girl he ever loved, he wants to cry. Not that he knows what she would look like these days, had she not died, had she grown up side by side with him.

The other woman Not-Tessa is talking to apparently says some other funny thing because there it is again, the snorting, full-bellied laugh and that crinkle around her eyes that is...remarkable. Of course it’s not Tessa. But maybe, if she was still alive, she would look a little like this. Without thinking, Scott takes his phone from his pant pocket and stops the door with his foot to have both hands free to zoom in and snap a picture of that mystery Tessa-lookalike.

“Hey, pinstripe-guy,” the security guy’s voice sounds even gruffer when it’s not heard from in front of a door. “This ain’t an Open House. In or out.”

“Sorry, so sorry,” Scott hurries and reluctantly plucks his eyes away from the women down the street to face the man sheepishly. “Sorry. In. I’m coming in.”

Sipping on his whiskey sour some time later, Scott has a hard time trying to keep up with the table conversation, his mind is still downstairs on the street. And now, with a little more alcohol in him and a little more time to wonder, there’s this uncomfortably hot pulling at the back of his ribs, gnawing at his heart, inching in on it. He knows that feeling, knows how ugly it is and knows he should stifle it.

“I’m taking a leak,” he tells his friends with little grace abruptly as soon as he’s put a name to the sensation. He leaves his seat and his drink with a dull thud on the table, the sound of the ice cubes clunking against the glass crisp and delicate.

_Hope_ , he thinks, sitting down on the toilet because he doesn’t really trust himself to aim right now. His phone burns in his pocket. There is hope on it, ingrained in a blurry snapshot. The stupid, irrational hope that for some bizarre reason and a freakish, fucking miraculous coincidence, that girl outside could really be Tessa. That instead of dying in a ditch or in some psycho’s dungeon somewhere, she simply decided at fifteen to run away and live in Hawaii. It’s silly of course.

But it keeps him in the stall long after he’s finished and dressed again, lingering around on the closed lid of the pot like a loser with his phone in his hands, staring at the blurry zoomed-in portion of the already zoomed-in picture he took out there, trying to imagine it’s possible and fighting that imagination at the same time. He needs someone to put him at ease about this, someone to talk sense into him.

So he hits ‘share’ on the picture and chooses his email app, types in his parents’ joined address and puts “There’s no way this could be Tessa Virtue, right?!” as the subject. There’s no answer for the rest of the night but he checks for one, every other minute, until Mike chides him and forces him to put his phone on the bottom of a stack of all of theirs on the table, announcing that the first person to pick theirs up has to pay the tab. (James ends up doing that, even if he doesn’t touch his own phone.) Still, Scott is not calming down. If anything, he gets more antsy as they’ve paid and are back out on the street. He just needs another glance at that woman to figure it out.

“Can we just go there for another drink or something?” He asks the guys, pointing at the club they are walking towards as they start moving.

“Dude, are you seriously suggesting going to a strip club?” James snickers. “You do remember that you’re getting married to my sister and I am _right here_?!”

_Fuck._

Okay, so this means any further investigation of Not-Tessa-But-Maybe-Tessa is absolutely not happening tonight. “No, uh, I mean, is it? A strip club? I had no idea,” Scott tries but James’ firm hand on his shoulder tells him it’s no use.

“Gentleman's Delight?” James reads off the sign, amused. “Yeah, I think it is. Come on, Scottie. Give my sister a couple of babies first before you turn into a whoring asshole.”

“I’m not going to—” Scott starts and James cuts him off with a laugh.

“I know, buddy,” his future brother in law says. “Strip club is still out of the question, though.”

“Yeah,” Scott nods weakly, as they pass the hostess in front of the club yapping something after them. An attempted glance inside on Scott’s part is rendered fruitless by the thick velvet curtain blocking out the view in the doorway.

And so he has to find a way to ditch the guys tomorrow. He thinks about the best tactic during the cab ride to the club, wedged into the backseat of the van between Kevin and Mike, his hands never stopping to fiddle with his karma bracelet, the beads growing hot and heavy under his touch.

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I wrote this a little sooner than I said I would...hope that's okay :)
> 
> I was told this is angsty, so, uh...be aware. 
> 
> Thank you for all your kind feedback so far, it makes me really happy *-*

**TWO**

 

Scott feels like a live wire, which is remarkable given that he and his friends have spent most of the day in a spa getting pampered. They’d gotten manicures and pedicures from tiny middle-aged ladies in a salon branded for men, which he found pretty ridiculous. Like taking care of your body and personal hygiene is such a feminine thing that you need to deck an entire salon in rough grey stones and black leather for men to be able to relax into someone fixing their cuticles. He had looked into himself, lying on the reclining chair, one woman working on his hand, one on his foot, eyes closed under a cooling eye-mask, and deliberated if he felt emasculated or uncomfortable and he had found that no, he didn’t. Neither did his friends. Well, Adam, maybe, because he kept making stupid jokes about changing his name to Eve but he wasn’t humoured by the others. The general consensus was that everyone was just too relaxed.

 

But Scott is not relaxed now. He’s been sitting at a bar with his guys for three hours and he’s deliberated how to ditch them for two of those. He keeps checking the Breitling watch on his wrist that Catherine’s parents got him for last Christmas. He doesn’t really know how much it’s worth, only that a theft and loss insurance came with it, so he guesses a lot. Sometimes it feels odd to be given exorbitant gifts like the chronograph or this trip, but he frequently gives back to his future family in law as much as he can, so he doesn’t think of himself of as a leech. From mowing the lawn, fixing Catherine's Dad’s car, to helping out at inventory in the restaurants, he tries to ‘earn his keep’, so to speak, even if his fiancée’s family, James most of all, keeps telling him that it’s not necessary. Still, Scott would feel weird if he just opened his hands and took and took, so he keeps at least offering his help where he can. Which also means he’s had to learn persistence.

 

A persistence he needs now, at eleven thirty at night, when he tells his buddies that he’s tired and he’s gonna go ahead to the hotel to sleep. Jude immediately puts his hand on his shoulder, as if to keep him in place, before Scott has even made a move to leave. 

“You’re not going anywhere,” Jude tells him, shaking his ginger locks vehemently. “The night is young, Scottie, you can’t be that tired yet.”

“I am, though,” he replies. “Yesterday’s still in my bones, I’m not twenty-five anymore.”

“Oh, come on,” Mike hollers, puffing up his wide chest and moving into Scott’s clear path to the exit.  “You’re making it sound like we’re fifty. And we were out until, what, Kev? Three, four in the morning?”

“Give or take,” Kevin shrugs. “Not too late in any case.”

“Guys, please,” Scott says, taking his wallet from the bar, shoving it down his free jeans pocket, the one his phone is not in, and reaches for his suit jacket thrown over the barstool. “I’m really tired. We still got a week to go, right? So we’ll totally party. I just need to rest tonight.”

 

“Nope,” Mike says and Jude chimes in: “Not gonna happen, Scott.”

“Guys, I’m serious,” Scott insists, now all set to leave. “I’m tired as all fuck and I want to go home. This is my trip, alright, you wouldn’t even be here without me.”

“Without James’ Dad, you mean,” Adam snickers, standing next to James by the bar. “So it’s really Jimmy’s call.”

James beside him shoots a look at Scott, raising an eyebrow which encourages the latter to raise his own, pleading, asking for some back-up. 

“Let him go,” James says eventually. “He’s right, we got all week still. If he wants to be boring and miss out, let him have it.” 

The moment of stand-off lasts a little bit longer, with Mike not ceding his blockade before eyeing both Scott and James for a long time until he finally relents, freeing the path. 

“Thanks, dude,” Scott says and pats his friend’s shoulder. “Appreciate it. I’ll see you in the morning.” The others grumble, their displeased grunts adding to the cacophony of sounds in the bar: bottles hitting wood, high heels clicking on granite, velvety liquor swirling around in crystal glass, late-twenty Canadians annoyed with their no-fun friend who wants to go home.

 

Except he’s not going home. Not that his friends know that. He gets in the cab he called and instead of giving the address of his hotel, he tells the cabbie the name of the strip club. _Gentleman’s Delight_ , it was. He’s glad for his good memory. He’s also good at ignoring the wiggling eyebrow of the guy.

 

“Good club,” he says, winking like they’re old buddies, united in their joy of watching half naked women spread their legs for dollar bills. Come to think of that, why would Tessa be in a place like that? Not that it’s Tessa. He’s thought about it a lot over the course of the day, spooning out a grapefruit over breakfast, shopping for ties at a boutique, getting his toenails clipped at the beauty spa, nursing his beer at the bar. There’s no way it’s her. 

 

Going back to the club is silly, really, he just needs to see it with his own eyes once again so he can move on with his life. His mind had played a trick on him the day before on that little street, mixing circumstance and faint similarity into a wild hope, a fantasy that nestled itself into his brain and grew into a tumor. He needs to get it out, that’s why he’s in that cab. Not because he really expects to see Tessa there. He should have been cured of the idea in the moment he figured out that he saw the woman in front of a _strip club._ Why would Tessa Virtue leave Canada at fifteen to end up in Hawaii as a stripper? That doesn’t make sense. So case closed: it’s not her. It’s just a matter of making sure now.

 

Tessa, a stripper! The thought alone is preposterous. She was always so pure. But then again, he thinks with an unbidden smile, sinking into the town car’s back seat, she did have her moments of tantalising him. Certainly on his birthday, that seventeenth birthday, the only one he ever spent with her as his girlfriend, where she stood in his room, unbuttoned a khaki trench coat and let it fall to the ground dramatically. What she revealed, what made him stagger backward and plop down bonelessly on his teenage-bedroom single bed, was that she was wearing nothing but a set of red, lacy lingerie underneath. 

 

Fourteen years later, Scott throws his head into his neck, landing on the headrest of the seat and closes his eyes. He shouldn’t indulge in the memory, because knowing where it’s going, he really shouldn’t, seeing that the only woman he should be fantasising about is Catherine. But then again, if it’s about a dead girl, she can’t really fault him, right?

 

Nobody will care if he just remembers how Tessa stood there, her thin body shaking just a little in her get-up, creamy skin decked with freckles and goosebumps. He recalls wondering if she was cold but only faintly. Mostly, he was stunned. She was the first girl in real life he had seen in lingerie. The first pair of stockings he’d seen on a real woman’s legs in the flesh in front of him and not in a magazine or on the internet. But that was probably because he was seventeen and his only girlfriend up to that point had been Marjorie Collétte, a transfer student from Montréal, and it had lasted three months with her, not long enough to see her in anything more revealing than a bathing suit, fifteen as they’d been while it lasted. Which reminded him…

 

“Tess,” he said, his throat raw and dry as sandpaper. “You don’t have to–”

“Happy birthday,” she smiled sweetly, taking a step forward and he could see how she was working to stand tall and confident, see the fight between embarrassment and the allure of his heated gaze on her. “Told you you’ll get your present later.”

 

She sucked her bottom lip into her mouth and bit on it, which distracted Scott from putting the pieces together sooner. The pieces were a) Tessa at his pizza dinner earlier that night, where all his friends gave him presents (a brand new Leafs jersey, a fresh hockey stick and a bunch of CDs, mostly Eminem and the great canon of current Canadian country artists), handing him an envelope and saying “This is the first bit, the rest comes later.” b) Tessa, upon him trying to open the envelope, putting her hand on his and squeezing, saying “Don’t open it until I tell you to,” and c) Tessa then, in his room, bending down gracefully to fish said envelope out of his backpack by the bed and handing it to him. 

 

“You can look and see what it is now,” she told him and he fiddled with the paper mindlessly, not paying any more attention to it than he did the sorry state of his bedroom, with all the clutter and dirty laundry scattered around. Tessa before him, in her perfection, stuck out like a sore thumb, if the sore thumb was a leggy goddess who was making breathing really hard. He only turned his focus on the present when his fingers closed around a thin, plastic-feely object inside that gave a little way when he squeezed it. He gasped in recognition and discarded the envelope, left only with the silver square in his hand, eyes flickering from it to her and back. A condom. That was the first bit of her gift. Which meant that... _she_ was the second part?

 

“Tess?” It was a wonder he even had a voice left to speak with.

“I thought we could...commemorate the occasion,” she said. Only Tessa Virtue would use a phrase like ‘commemorate the occasion’ to describe losing their virginity to each other. He didn’t know what to do with that. Because of course he’d thought about it. He was a hot-blooded, teenage boy, seventeen years and bursting with testosterone, and he loved her and he wanted her, _duh._ But still…

 

“You’re fifteen, T,” he muttered, putting the condom gingerly on the mattress behind him, as if it had just burned the tips of his fingers. “You’re...too young.”

“Oh come on, are you serious?” she asked him, putting her hands on her hips, shifting her weight to look challenging. “I’m not _that_ young.”

“But I’m older,” he reminded her. “I need to look out for you.”

“I can look after myself, thank you very much,” she insisted and closed the distance between them with two sure steps and then did the most outrageous thing up to this point, which was climbing on top of his lap, putting her knees on either side of his hips so she was straddling him. “Who would you say of the two of us is more mature, huh?”

“You,” he answered, not missing a beat, mostly because with her sitting on him, on his jeans that were getting tighter and tighter, he couldn’t think of a smart comeback to that.

“See,” she shrugged, “and I have decided that we’re ready.” She paused, caught herself and then his neck under her fingers, caressing him lightly. “Unless _you’re_ not ready. I don’t want to push you into anything you don’t wanna—”

 

He laughed out loud, rocking with his whole body which had the effect of making her sit more firmly on him, more pressing, and it made his arms close around her waist, desperate to keep her there.

“I think I’ve been ready for about a year now,” he mumbled in the general direction of her breasts. He had to force himself to look up at her and into her eyes. She had a full face of makeup on and her red hair set into luscious curls. She’d made such an effort to look sexy and beautiful for him, to look like a proper woman. 

“Are you sure?” he asked her and she nodded. It was funny that she didn’t feel like a kid to him then and he realised that she hadn’t in a long time, that when he was with her, _he_ didn’t feel like a kid to himself. 

 

They were fifteen and seventeen, had known each other ten years at that point, had grown up together, but they weren’t children anymore. He wondered if for each other, they had ever _really_ been children. In retrospect, they had always been man and woman, somehow. Even when baking mud pies at eight and nine, always together in the summer when age just kept them apart by a single year, when Tessa getting home from ballet boarding school was the highlight of his holidays. Or at twelve and thirteen when he showed her how to play pool and golf. When he would step behind her to show her how to hit a billiard ball just right or how to putt correctly, like people did in the movies. 

 

Her hair would tickle his nose and she would giggle in his arms and he would feel those butterflies in his chest and tummy that he always knew was a fundamentally different feeling than those he had when he spent time with his buddies. She had always made him feel different, a sort of desire he had neither the capacity nor the experience to understand as a kid. On his seventeenth birthday, getting hard like a goddamn lamppost under her, he _did_ understand, however. And his self-control was wearing thin.

 

“I’m sure,” Tessa said, answering his question, and dipped down almost experimentally to kiss him. They had kissed a lot before, kissed and properly made-out, lying on top of each other, touching each other. But he’d only touched her above her clothes until that night and...okay fine, he had touched her boobs under her shirt once but he had never gone further. But he knew how sex worked, yeah? 

 

He had seen the films on the internet, knew that he needed to touch her down there, between her legs, knew that he had to get her ready before he could be inside her, or however you called it when you wanted it to sound pretty and meaningful and not like fucking. Because he didn’t want to _fuck_ her. Horny and stupid as he was, he didn’t just want to score, he wanted it to mean something because he loved her and he needed it to be special and for her and to enjoy herself, to give her everything _she_ wanted. He always wanted her to have everything she wanted. When she said she was sure, that surely meant that what she wanted was _him._ And how could he really say no to that?

 

“I need it to be you,” she whispered against his mouth and leaned out again to look at him, rolling her hips into his in the effort, making him groan. “I need it to be you _tonight._ ”

“Hmmh, Tessa,” he breathed, dropping his head onto her shoulder. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

“I won’t let you,” she grinned and kissed him again, more demanding this time. That was the moment he knew he’d lost because that was her determined voice and when Tessa was determined, Tessa got what she was after, always. 

 

He let her take charge, watched her climb off of him to lock his bedroom door and shut the light, let her take off his shirt and pants and watched her touch him, watched her eyes study every exposed inch of him, watched her roll the condom down his length, his heart beating up to his chest. He let her set the pace, decide when she was ready to lay down on her back and pull him on top of her, touched her how she told him she liked it and aligned them, when she said she wanted him to. 

 

And then his memory goes blurry. He only remembers her face, how it split when he moved inside her for the first time, her brow furrowed in concentration, her green eyes dark in the dim light of his bedside lamp. He stilled and asked her if she was alright and she squared her jaw and nodded, dug her fingernails into his arms hard and told him to go on. He doesn’t know how long he’d lasted after, doesn’t think it was impressive by any stretch of the imagination and doesn’t flatter himself that her world was completely rocked that night, either. But he’d held her afterwards, close to his chest, and rubbed her bare back, feeling at once completely changed and the exact same he did before he lost his virginity. 

“How do you feel?” he asked her softly, hoping that she wasn’t regretting it.

“Good,” she said. “Weird. But good.”

“Weird?”

“Yeah,” she nodded, her cheek on his chest. “I expected to feel really different now, like, I thought it was gonna be way more scandalous.”

 

Scott snorted out an ugly laugh, the kind reserved for Tessa only. Most people that had known her, knew only the polished front. The sensible, smart Tess that was the top of her class, the dignified ballerina, the well-spoken captain of the debate team. Only those closest to her knew her cutting sense of humour, those dry-humoured remarks she mumbled under her breath that had him in stitches every time. A couple of weeks before sleeping together, they’d seen a guy with a ridiculously obvious toupet at a family wedding and Tessa had made jokes about it all night. By the end of it, his stomach hurt from laughing. She’d been hysterical, the funniest person he knew and he was infinitely glad that for as long as he’d had her, he got to see the whole of her. The good, the bad and the hilarious.

 

“Scandalous?” he repeated, pulling her closer.

“Illicit,” she clarified. “Everybody always acts like sex is so dirty but I didn’t think it was dirty at all.”

“No?” he said, nuzzling closer to her, trying to get his voice low and sexy but back then it hadn’t properly broken, late-bloomer that he’d been, so he doesn’t remember if it worked. “Did you want it to be dirtier?”

“Not tonight,” she whispered back. “Maybe next time.”

 

The next time wasn’t much dirtier either but he took his sweet time learning more of her responses, trying to figure out what she liked and asking for feedback whenever he was sound of mind enough to. That time she finished too, which was his one hung up from their first time. At least she told him she finished. He’ll never know now if that was true but he likes to tell himself the four times they had together were good for her too. He does know that he thanks his weak, horny teenage self for not insisting they wait until they were older. The fact that he gave in and let her have her way that night turned out to be one of his best decisions ever. Because when she disappeared, he had at least that. The memories of their nights together will be forever etched into his mind and she will always be the first girl he slept with. His first, ever. Nobody can take that away from him, even if someone took Tessa. 

 

He’ll never forget how she looked lying beneath him, how she gazed up at him with trust and love and wonder. How they shared this new thing, united in that changed world in which they were two people that shared intimacy, soft touches and mumbled whispers in the dead of night. He’d had that and he’d had it with her, the first girl he ever loved. Really, being with Tessa, and not just in the physical sense, had shaped him the short three months he got to call her his girlfriend. The same as he had grown into this larger than life-love for her, he had grown into being a good partner. A week into their blooming relationship, way before Tessa decided they were ready to have sex, he’d already learned to answer her texts in an okay time frame or to at least text her that he was too busy to text. She told him in very clear terms that relationships worked only through communication and that if he wanted to have a grown-up partnership with her, he should honour that. 

 

Scott has to chuckle even now, turning his head to gaze at the flickering lights passing by the car as they drive through downtown Honolulu. He can’t imagine any other fifteen year old girl that would analyse romantic relationships from afar and walk her brand new boyfriend through a catalogue of how to’s on how to be a good couple. But she had. She’d introduced what she called ‘a code of respect’ that entailed no name-calling when they fought (not that they ever had when they were still just friends), no excuses when you wanted time for yourself and no being mad at the other person when they needed to be alone. She set time apart at the end of every day to call him on the phone, even if they had spent the whole day together. She had written him notes every day while she was there over the summer, so he could read them once the term started again and she had to be in Toronto at ballet school during the week. 

 

He still has those notes tucked away in a box in his apartment, buried underneath school certificates and old photos. He knows them all by heart. He’d been Tessa Virtue’s boyfriend from early July until the day she disappeared on September 28th and in that time, he had become a man, in every possible way. He was a grown-up the day she vanished and it was good that he was. Because if he hadn’t been, he doesn’t know how he would’ve survived. 

 

On the morning of the 28th, a Saturday, they woke up in the same bed. She had come over late on Friday after getting in from Toronto and had dinner with her family. His mother had bought her favourite cereal and put it on the table with a “Since you’ll probably be over more nights now…” and a grin. He’d told his mother after the fact, that he’d lost his virginity, more sheepish than he thought befitted a seventeen year old who could make his own decisions, but she wasn’t angry or shocked or anything. She simply sat him down for twenty minutes and gave him a very stern talking to regarding protection and teenage pregnancy. About how it was his responsibility that Tessa could fulfill her potential and live her dreams, that it was in his hands to make sure he didn’t get her pregnant before she knew what she wanted to do with her life. He agreed wholeheartedly. And that was that. Going forth, Alma Moir was the staunchest supporter of Tessa-and-Scott. 

 

It’s just that the box of cereal never got finished. Tessa got the first serving that moning, watched a movie on the couch draped over Scott’s lap, and then left to go babysit. The last anybody knows of her was that she left there at six in the evening still in one piece. And she’d texted him, at six twelve: “Done now, gonna watch a movie with Jordan. Already miss you tho. Love you always.” 

 

Back when he got it, it had made him smile, mostly because she wasn’t usually one for corny texts. Since he was definitely the sappier one out of the two of them. Later that night, he forgot all about it though, when Kate called and said Tessa never made it to the cinema. He drove around town in his truck, knowing his Dad, Tessa’s parents, his brothers and her sister Jordan where combing through the other corners of the city, willing for her to just walk out of a restaurant somewhere with some reasonable explanation for ditching her sister.

 

By Monday, they called the police. By Tuesday, there was a search party combing through the woods around London. By Wednesday, Scott cried for the first time. By Friday, he couldn’t go to school. He didn’t go back for two weeks. Tessa wasn’t found. He tried to come up with reasons why she would have left on her own, wondered if he’d done anything wrong. He wound up _wishing_ he’d driven her away, so angry at him about something stupid he said or done that she would have skipped town. It was better believing she was furious with him somewhere because then at least she would be alive. 

 

The alternative was unthinkable. The thought alone that someone could have hurt her was too excruciating to ponder. But as more and more time passed, he couldn’t keep his mind from going there. He couldn’t help but picture garish scenarios, imagine some insidious man in a van snatching her up, doing unspeakable things. 

 

He got so angry, he started hitting things, learning how to hack into the police database to figure out what they were doing about Tessa’s case and picked fights with random people at school or in front of bars bars when he found out there was no progress whatsoever. He’d been so good channeling his restless energy into skating or debating whatever with Tessa when she’d been around, because she’d always helped him with that excess energy. Without her, without knowing if he would ever get her back, if she was even still alive, there was no channeling, there was no balance. He simply lost it. The second week of her disappearance, he finally used the fake ID Adam had given him ages before and bought booze, got drunk, slept in, missed the first hour of school, picked more fights, got drunk again that evening, and rinsed and repeated that. For months he spiraled. 

 

All he did was drink and fight, reread Tessa’s notes and texts and yelled at God when he stole off into the fields beyond Ilderton to be alone. He only stopped when his parents were called into school and told that he wouldn’t graduate if he continued on that warpath with himself and the world. His mother sat him down that night and told him that Tessa wouldn’t want this for him. It was the beginning of the new tradition of straightening Scott out by telling him what Tessa would expect of him and of his life. She’d want him to get healthy, to stop drinking, to get his studying in order, to graduate, to keep helping his Mom at the rink, to follow his passion for coaching, to live a good life. To laugh and go out and have fun.

 

But how could he? How could he laugh and have fun when she wasn’t there? How could he eat and be merry when she never got to finish that stupid box of cereal? How could he move on from school when she never graduated? Never danced the lead in the Nutcracker like she always wanted, would never become the best ballerina in the world. How could he go to parties and meet his friends, when his best friend was gone? When the love of his life had just disappeared into thin air? 

 

One night, with definitely too much beer in his system to be operating a vehicle, he drove to her house and climbed over the Virtue’s porch into her bedroom. Minutes later, a spooked and terrified looking Kate barged into Tess’s room with a hockey stick barred for attack, but instead of a hostile intruder, she found him, curled up and weeping on her daughter’s bed.

 

She dropped the stick and hurried to him, scooped him up into her arms like he was her own and held him as he cried and cried. 

“I don’t understand,” he recalls saying, voice broken and hoarse. “It’s not fair.”

“Shh, it’s okay,” Kate had said, rubbing his back, and he hated himself for putting her into the position that she had to console him while it should’ve been the other way around. “It’s alright.”

“It’s not alright,” he’d said and sat up, winding out of the hug, unable to look at her. “Nothing’s alright. She should be here. She should be right here, safe and sound and, _fuck_ , it’s...it’s all so messed up.”

“She wouldn’t want us to be—”

“No,” he’d nearly yelled, short-fused and half-drunk, still. “I’m so sick and tired of that. She would want to be here, she’d want to have a fucking life. And the police aren’t doing anything! They’re just sittin’ around wasting time. She’s still out there. She could still be out there.”

“Scott.” And that tone, that tone was what had finally broken him. Her own mother sounding like she was preparing to tell him to give up on her, like he should be preparing to let her go and just accept that she was gone. He couldn’t stay. He didn’t even say goodbye, he just ran out of there, past packed boxes in the hallway and suitcases by the door. It only barely registered that Jim, Tessa’s father, must really have been in the process of moving out, something his mom and dad had talked about over dinner some other night. 

 

Scott couldn’t linger to feel bad for Kate or even properly acknowledge it. He just needed to drive. And drive he did, right into a dense bush off the side of the mainroad home. Nothing bad happened to him, he just totalled the car and got a few cuts and bruises on top of a nasty concussion that got him a two day stint at the hospital. He honestly hadn’t cared. His parents rushed to his side, worried sick, but he couldn’t even feign relief at not being hurt more severely. He’d half wanted to be hurt _more_ , caught himself thinking he’d rather have disappeared too.

 

He didn’t really want to live in a world where people gave up on finding Tessa. Most of all, he didn’t really want to live in a world where Tessa didn’t exist. He’d been so utterly uninterested in a life without her back then. Which is probably why eight months after his girlfriend’s disappearance, his parents put him in therapy. It didn’t take immediately but it was probably the reason why he could go to Tessa’s funeral five months later and not dig himself a hole to lie next to her. It was probably also the reason why he did end up graduating and did get his life back on track with normal amounts of drinking and none of it when he had to be driving somewhere. It saved him, really, and he’s glad for it. But it’s also a part of his life now. He doesn’t fully trust himself to manage without seeing his therapist once a month and doesn’t want to know how many of his Tessa-shaped demons would come haunting him should he quit.

 

As the cab slows to a halt in front of _Gentleman’s Delight_ , he ponders that he should probably give the man a call once he’s gotten his peace of mind about this Not-Tessa and thoroughly unpack why he’s this obsessed after all these years. That he would ditch his friends on his own bachelor’s trip to go stare at a stripper who vaguely reminds him of Tessa. He’s in no place to stop his actions now but there will be a day of reckoning when he has to figure out why he’s here. Preferably before he marries Catherine, so he doesn’t drag too much of his baggage into their union. Because Catherine doesn’t deserve that. She deserves a wholesome fella, who’s not chasing after every pair of green eyes in the hope of finding some girl in them that punched a hole into his existence fourteen years ago. 

 

He vows to be better as he pays the cab driver generously, he’s not spending too much money on this trip, thanks to James and his father, so he can at least splurge on his unnecessary and ill-advised side-quest. He’ll be better at this in the future, certainly. He just needs to see that woman again so he can be sure. So he can get married in peace, knowing that Tessa absolutely isn’t a stripper at a bar in Hawaii. He watches the cab drive off, straightening out his light blue T-shirt and jean shorts, still hot even though it’s night, and nods at the scantily clad hostess outside of the club who beckons him forward.

 

“Good evening, sir. Admission is ten dollars,” she informs him, grinning sweetly. “And you can change your money into our club currency if you like, the girls take only _our_ dollars. Exchange rate is five for one.”

“Thanks, but I’m good,” he tells her. “I don’t think I’ll be there long.”

“Suit yourself,” the girl purrs. “But they all say that.”

“I’m sure,” he replies, handing her a bill from his wallet and then realises he’s holding his breath when she opens the thick velvet curtain to let him through. He won’t get lost in here. He’s on a mission. 

 

He just needs to see that woman again, just once, and then he’ll move on.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel bad for BB-Scott. I'm sorry.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whoops. I don't know, this story is just galloping away with me. This just happened.
> 
> Eternal thanks to KIM and FAIRWINDS09 for their feedback on this and also on the earlier chapters. Eternal heroes.
> 
> And that you all for your feedback! I will get to your comments soon, I promise, they all mean the world!! <3
> 
> Find the song mentioned in this chapter here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eg3F4zpOdK8

**THREE**

 

Predictably, the strip club is packed full on a Saturday at midnight. He doesn’t know what he expected but the establishment is not it. He’s not been to many strip clubs in his day but his general assumption has always been that they are sketchy and kind of gross as a general rule, but this one isn’t. This one is high class, for a lack of a better word. What he can see of it anyway in the dim light. The light is neon, yes, but _purple_ neon, so it doesn’t seem overly tacky. There is a catwalk in the middle of the room with a pole on each end and one in the middle in the dead center of a round, elevated stage. At the far end, there’s a giant swing where a half naked girl is currently doing her thing, swinging ‘sexily’, which is quite the sight. Scott unbuttons the uppermost button of his shirt and feels ashamed of himself for a second. Mostly because he’s alone and everybody knows that the only people who go to a strip club alone are perverts.

 

On each side of the catwalk, there are actual beds, little lounges seperated by wall-high white curtains, parted in the front to allow a full view of the girls but not the other patrons left and right. So you just have to watch the guys opposite of you leering at any given time but not anyone else. Scott passes up the last free bed because he would feel very silly and exposed sitting there by his lonesome and makes his way towards the bar. He’s not the only lone wolf hiding out in the murky shadows there, but he’s certainly the youngest and the least gross looking, at least that’s what he hopes. Nobody but the bartender acknowledges him, giving him a curt nod and giving the menu a little ways down the bar a shove towards him.

 

“Thanks,” Scott mutters and glances over the list of cocktails and chooses a double whiskey on ice because his nerves are too frayed for something with an umbrella. Maybe this was a terrible idea. He has no idea if the girl is even working today. If she even works here at all. He could be sitting here all night like a pathetic loser. It’s on his second whiskey and watching the fifth girl out on the stage that he finally cracks and calls the barkeeper over.

 

“Hey, um, I have a question,” he says carefully, making up some bullshit as he goes along. “Uh, a friend of mine said she works here but I’m not sure if she was serious. She’s, uh, about this tall,” he indicates a height somewhere between his earlobe and shoulder blade, thin, long dark hair to around here,” he touches a finger to his own elbow. “Green eyes, really long legs…”

“She white?” The other guy asks with a raised eyebrow as he polishes a martini glass with a dishtowel. Scott nods. “Then it’s probably Niki.”

“Yeah,” Scott says after a moment, realising that he hasn’t thought this through. Of course he has no idea what her name is, since it obviously isn’t Tessa, because it’s _not_ Tessa. So he improvises. “Nicole.”

“Nikita,” says the barman with a frown and Scott swallows hard. Shit. “Nah, man, I’m just messin’ with ya. She just goes by Nikita in here. Sounds more sexy, you know.”

“Ha, yeah,” Scott laughs awkwardly. “She hasn’t mentioned that.”

“But you’re not some creep, are you?” The barkeeper asks him and gestures towards his nearly empty glass, topping him up after a brief confirming nod on Scott’s part. “‘Cause if you are, I’ll fuck you up, man.”

“Not a creep,” Scott hurries, not doubting the guy or his tattooed, tree-trunk arms for a second. If this man shook him like he’s handling the shaker, he’d be done for. Scott has no interest crossing him. “Promise.”

 

The man considers him for a moment, scrutinising, as if to determine his creep-status but seems to deem him non-threatening soon enough because he leans forward slightly.

“I don’t know what she told you man, but she barely ever dances anymore. She started a year ago, best real dancer we ever had, but she’s too smart for that. She’s practically running the place now, real knack for business ‘n everything,” the other man says, hands perched on the bar.

Scott swallows past the lump in his throat. That sounds a lot like someone he used to know. “Uh huh,” he rasps. “Yeah, she mentioned that.”

“But you’re in luck, I think,” The barkeeper tells him with a wink. “Heard she’s leaving for a bu’niss trip with the boss tomorrow, so you almost missed her.”

“She’s…,” Scott coughs. “She’s here?”

“Yeah,” the other replies. “Maybe she’ll even dance tonight, I think I heard somethin’.”

Scott’s throat is so dry suddenly he has to clear it twice, sounding and likely looking pathetic as hell. This is ridiculous, it’s not Tessa, why is he so nervous?! “When?” he sputters out regardless. “I mean, when does she usually dance?”

 

A soft synth beat starts playing over the PA and his barkeeper grins. “Ha. Right now, it seems, my friend. That’s her song.” 

 

Scott whips around, clutching his whiskey, and recognises the song faintly as ‘Closer’ by Kings of Leon, just as the light in the club changes from purple to red and a silhouette is lit from behind, stepping on pointed toes, barefoot, onto the catwalk. He can’t see anything but long dark hair and his heart inadvertently stops. _It’s not her_ , he tells himself, like it’s a prayer.

“Oh, fellas, you’re in for a treat,” the MC, who’s been announcing every girl so far, blares into his mic where he sits at the DJ set at the other side of the room. “Our pearl at _Gentleman’s Delight_ , a seldom guest on our hallowed catwalk these days, so it’s your lucky night, guys. Put your ass cheeks together for: Nikita!”

 

Scott doesn’t even cringe at the awkward intro because he’s enraptured by the figure in front of him, outlined by light, as she starts moving snake-like to the slow, tantalising beat as electric guitars are building to a haunting crescendo. 

 

 _Stranded in a spooky town,_ _stoplight is swaying and the phone lines are down._  

 

She bends and rises into a perfect arabesque and Scott finds himself rocking forward on his barstool, putting one foot on the ground. It’s so dark, he can’t see her right. She goes out of the pose by hooking her foot around the pole behind her and then turns, working her leg languidly up against the steel until it’s high over her head. That’s when she grabs the pole and hoists herself up gracefully, like it’s nothing. 

 

_She took my heart, I think she took my soul._

 

His friend behind the bar wasn’t lying when he said Niki was the best dancer they had. All the girls who came before had been good movers and athletic but she, she is something else. And there is something in her movements that makes it hard to repeat the chant of ‘It’s not her,’ in his head. Something about the way she shakes her head to throw her hair into her neck. The chorus hits and so do the lights. He’s still too far away to clearly make out her features but he can see that whoever she is, she isn’t gangly and skinny as Tessa had been that last morning he’d seen her. This woman is strong and built. The muscles under her arms and legs move deliciously as she works herself around the pole like it’s second nature, her abs defined, telling of the immense core strength needed to levitate over the ground like that. She climbs up like a monkey, transitions into spins and poses but it doesn’t look like a gym class exercise. She _dances._  

 

Her arm’s extension is near well perfect and he remembers in a flash that once upon a time he’d had Tessa teach him some of her ballet when he’d tentatively started helping out his Mom coach figure skating at the rink. Now that the light is somewhat brighter, he can see that she is wearing a black mesh top over her bra and she’s still perched up on the pole, holding on only with her legs, when she slowly takes it off. His insides twist together when she lets herself down, leaving the flimsy fabric behind at the first pole and walks tiptoed to the round in the middle, circling the pole until she can spin around it and finally ends on her knees with her back arching against the steel. She throws her head back, her long black hair brushing her round ass in a tiny black panty and Scott is completely immobile when she reaches behind her to unclasp her bra.

 

As it falls, a guy from one of the beds to the left approaches the catwalk and leans down to put a dollar under the waistband of the woman’s underwear. She watches the man patiently. Scott wants to kill him. _It’s not her_ , he shouts at himself, but he’s jumped off his barstool nonetheless. He’s possessive over this stranger, he realises, not proud of himself. It’s not Tessa but if it was, he’d break this clown’s jaw. Fuck, but then again, what if it is? He hasn’t looked before, to keep some semblance of propriety, but he remembers that he very much knows what her breasts look like and even if the rest of her body could potentially have changed with age and exercise, her breasts would still be her breasts, if they were, in fact, _hers_. And so he allows his eyes to travel from her face, her nose and lips, down her long neck, her sharp collar bones, down to the round, small pebbles of her nipples. He registers the strangled, hoarse sound beside the beat before he understands that it came from him. 

 

 _This isn’t happening_ , he thinks. _This is a coincidence_. It can’t be her. It just can’t be. His legs take him forward, two paces, three, and he’s clutching his whiskey tight enough to turn the ice into water. He drinks, automatic, and the liquid burns his throat, making his eyes water. The woman rises like a wave. He needs to look at her face again, needs to know if this could really be Tessa, but then she’s upside down on the pole, her hair falling, shrouding her features from view. She paints the music with her body and if he wasn’t so on edge, so flayed raw at the sight of her, he’d be able to appreciate the athleticism, the aesthetic of it, the fact that he’s turned on out of his mind but all that just plays somewhere in the back of his brain, as an afterthought. At the forefront of everything is the need to know. Only he is frozen to the spot. 

 

He can’t move a single step forward and doesn’t, not for the rest of the song. Not even when she finishes and takes the dollar bills a hostess collects for her, bends down one more time to pick up her bra first and her mesh top later, at the end of the catwalk. Not when she walks away in the dark. Not for long moments after. He’s petrified, his heart beating so fast he thinks he might be having a panic attack. 

 

The hope he never quite managed to extinguish inside his chest flares up, turns his insides into a raging fire, spreading from his gut to his lungs up into his throat. He can’t breathe. If that’s her…if that’s _really_ Tessa...he has no idea what he’ll do. Finally he moves, but backward, staggering to the bar, blindly reaching for the wooden top to steady himself, just to keep on his feet.

“You okay, buddy?” the barkeeper asks when Scott thuds against the corpus like a sack of flour. “Told you she’s the best we have.”

“I need…shit, I need another one,” Scott says, nearly pleading and hands his whole wallet over. His fingers are shaking too much to work his credit card out. “Make it double.”

 

“She’ll be out in a bit,” the barkeep says, watching him pensively as he downs the drink in one large gulp. “She usually goes home after her number.”

“I, uh, I think I’ll...have a smoke, outside,” Scott mutters, thinking on his feet as well as he still can and puts the glass down, aiming for gentle but it doesn’t really work. “I’ll wait for her there.”

“A’ight,” the other man says and something else Scott doesn’t hear anymore because his only objective is to get out of there on both his feet. He would like to drop to the floor and crawl, doesn’t trust his body anymore and he’s dizzy as fuck, the whiskey slugging around in his system not helping a bit. He walks blindly through the velvet curtain and into the night. Miraculously, it’s more well lit out in the street at one thirty in the morning than it is in there. He tumbles past the hostess, eyes on his shaky digits and takes a deep breath of the cooler night air, willing it to sober him up.

 

“You really didn’t stay long, huh?” he hears the woman quip but he doesn’t understand. He feels like he’s been in there for years. Time has no meaning anymore. And it doesn’t pass at all as he loiters near the club, waiting. Waiting for Niki, for Tessa, for that woman. 

“Can I call you a cab, sir?” the hostess asks him from some three planets over and he weakly turns his head to her.

“No, that’s fine,” he says over a meek smile, short of breath. “A buddy is picking me up...yeah. Will be right here.” 

He stalks away a little, so as to not attract attention, slips into a doorway to wait and wait and wait, nearly keeling over from tension. It feels like ages until he can see movement from the corner of his eye and snaps his head around to see a woman emerge from behind the velvet curtain. Long, black hair worked into a top knot, high on her head, wearing dark grey sweatpants and a light jacket. Niki kisses the hostess on the cheek and Scott leans forward to watch the other woman hold on to her wrist and whisper something in her ear and then time stops.

 

Niki’s head turns, in his direction, and he can see her frown before he lowers his head like a shot and scrambles for his phone to open a random app to study it intently as she starts moving and passes him. He would try to smell her as she walks by, creepy as that is, but he’s not breathing. He’s rendered motionless once more, listening to her footsteps grow fainter. Fuck. He can’t let her get away. He needs at least one clear look at her face or to hear her speak or ask her, flat out, if by chance she happened to leave her family and the boy who loved her in Canada fourteen years ago to come here and if her name is really Tessa and what the hell is happening anyway?

 

He finds himself walking after her without having processed his brains’ command to his body to do so but he doesn’t question it. He’s moving and he needs to be. Mindlessly, he picks up his pace as she rounds the corner and follows her high bun across several intersections, making three or four very sharp turns, almost like she is trying to shake him. And yeah, maybe she is. Jesus Christ, he is following a woman through empty streets in the dead of night. What the fuck is he doing? But he can’t stop, he _needs_ to know. Maybe he should call out for her? But what should he call her? Nikki? Nicole? Tessa? He doesn’t dare. He has no idea how to explain himself, doesn’t remember enough words to even attempt to. His whole being is burning, his soul scorched, yearning for release. His view clouds, with panic or tears, he isn’t sure, he only knows that it takes a blink to clear his vision to lose her.

 

And if his heart had raced before, now it’s in a frenzy. He curses loudly and whips around, staggers like a headless chicken and falls into a run, looking left and right for her, panic rising, bubbling up in his veins and yeah, that’s definitely tears in his eyes right now.

“Fuck,” he hisses. His expletive nearly drowns out the sound, a rattle echoing through an alleyway just ahead, but only just nearly. Springing into action brainlessly, he follows it on blind hope. Only the alley is dead empty when he’s walking into it, there is nothing but forgotten heaps of trash bags, not a single soul to be seen, he’s alone. He makes a sound, something between a choke and a sob, unable to keep it together, and has to run both his hands over his face and into his hair to be able to stay upright, to hold himself up. His clothes are too tight, too close to his skin, suffocating him. He can’t have lost her. Not before he _knows._

 

A gust of wind rushes through the small canyon of the alley, blowing some stray pieces of trash his way and he perks up. There was another sound there, another rattle, something metallic, maybe? Automatic, he whips around to the source of it but turns around again when there’s nothing there and then he has a thought. _Above._ He looks above. There are fire escapes. Maybe she went up the fire escape!

He takes a breath and casts his eyes up and he tries, gathers his courage, and opens his mouth. “Tessa?”

That’s when something very hard connects with the back of his head and before the pain can properly register, he is out like a light. He falls into blackness, images whirring in his head, shapes and colours blurring. 

 

 _Blue eyes, honey blonde hair between his fingers. Catherine. She is bent over him. White sheets. The smell of detergent. “Do you love me?” she asks, her voice like a windchime. He touches her soft skin. “I love you,” he promises and he almost means it. “Marry me?” he asks, on one knee, surrounded by white flowing cloth, hung on a washing line? Maybe? He’s not sure. He’s walking through clouds. “I want to grow old with you,” she says. “Do you love me?” A different voice. A trickle of black. A river. Tessa. Water rushing in. Smoke, fire, somewhere. Close. “Do you love me?” A roaring laugh. A freckled nose. A hand reaching for his. “Do you love me?” Catherine. But not Catherine. “Do you love me?”_ I don’t know _, he thinks. “Will you marry me?” I’m moving on, he thinks. I can’t live half a life forever. “Do you love me? Do you?_ Do you? _” She pulls at him, gnaws, scratches, rips at his hair, at the back of his head. “Do you love me?” It hurts. It hurts, his head, fuck, it hurts. It hurts. It_ hurts.

 

Scott rips his eyes open, wanting the pain to stop. At first, there’s no light, no time, no vision. But then there’s green. Grey flakes and green irises. Eyes, staring back at him. Tessa. Is he dreaming? Is he dead? Is this the afterlife and she’s come to get him, finally come to take him home? But why does his head hurt if he’s dead? Why, unless… 

 

 _Tessa_. He scrambles, he wants to sit up, but he can’t move. His head is pounding, it hurts so badly. Someone hit him. Someone hit him and he fell. He fell onto trash bags. It stinks, like mold and decay. But there’s eyes. Tessa’s eyes. Everything’s spinning. 

“Tess?” he mutters, reaching out. He feels the face he reaches for before it comes into focus, feels fingers close around his before it computes that she touched him, that she is taking his hand and is putting it down.

“Shh,” she hums.

 

“Is that you?” he whispers, staring at her nose. That’s not her nose. But those are her eyes. He knows those eyes, he knows them. He never thought he’d see them again. If the world could stop spinning so he can figure this out, that would be great. “Tessa?”

“Don’t,” she hisses and her eyes go dark and then they’re gone. She’s turned her head, she’s looking behind her. “Don’t say that name.”

 

He needs to come to, he needs to sit up, he needs to understand what is happening. He needs to know that this isn’t a dream. “Is this real?” he breathes, willing his eyes to fully open. Pulling at his muscles makes his scalp feel like it’s bursting apart. He winces. So does she when she looks back at him.

“I’m so sorry,” she says and then there are hands holding his head gently. “I didn’t mean to get you so hard. But you can’t be here, you can’t...you have to forget this ever happened.”

“What?” he doesn’t understand. “What do you mean? Are you here? Are you _her_? What do you-”

“Scott,” she says, like she used to when he was going on a tangent and she lost her patience with him, when she would pluck him right off the edge of a freak-out or a rant or a stupid, impulsive idea he’d come to regret.

 

His lungs are empty. It’s _her_. 

 

And if he’s really awake and really alive then that means that she’s not dead. That she’s right there. That Tessa still exists in this world and he’s found her. He has finally found her. He struggles up, onto his elbows, searching and losing purchase on the trash bags, falling back.

 

“Don’t,” she warns him. “You have a mild concussion. I called you a cab. It’ll be here in ten. Until it gets here, you need to rest. And then you need to forget that this ever happened, okay? Alright, Scott? You need to promise me! Nobody can know.”

“Tessa?” he says again, stupidly unable to do more than repeat her name but this time she frees one hand from her grip on his head and puts it on his mouth.

“Don’t call me that,” she orders, her forehead set into a wrinkled frown. She didn’t have as many when he last saw her. His face is so cold when she takes her hand off of it again.

“What happened to your nose?” he asks, like an idiot, and she cocks her head at him. He’s very dizzy, so he could be wrong, but he thinks she might be smiling, just a little.

“Had it fixed,” she shrugs and then the smile, if it was ever there, falters. She looks sad now. And she’s moving, like she’s trying to get away.

 

“No,” he gasps. He grapples for her hand again, it lands on his shoulder but he grabs it and pushes it to his clavicle bone, pulling as much as he can. He begs. “Don’t go. Please, _please_ don’t go.”

“I have to,” she whispers and strains against his grip. “You don’t understand, you’re in danger. You need to leave and you need to forget you ever saw me. Okay? You can never tell anybody. Promise me, Scott.” None of this makes any sense.

“Why?” He digs his fingernails into the soft flesh of her hand like he’s a rake and she’s a field in spring.

“I can’t explain,” she says and leans back, using the momentum to break free. “Just promise me. Promise me!”

“I…,” he starts but he can’t speak. How can he promise her that?

“I need to go,” she pleads with him, even though he is no longer holding her. “I need to…. Shit, Scott, how did you find me?”

“I wasn’t…,” he starts and even though he knows how it’ll sound, he isn’t at full capacity, so he can’t turn it into anything other than: “I wasn’t looking for you. Just coincidence.”

But that doesn’t seem to hurt her, that he hasn’t come here because he had never stopped looking. If anything, it seems like it puts her at ease. She looks so different and still exactly the same, when her face changes like that, puzzling something out. 

 

There is a myriad of feelings straining inside him, demanding to be felt, a scream lodged at the back of his throat but it all falls silent, goes mute and numb when suddenly, she snaps forward and her lips land on his, hard and unrelenting. Her hand around his head pulls him against her but he can’t even feel the pain this time. She’s kissing him. By the time he understands this and kisses her back, she is already breaking away again and looks down at him. He wonders how she is still upright when the whole world just tipped onto the side.

 

“Goodbye, Scott,” she whispers, her voice thick now and it’s the first time he fully notices that it’s deeper now. “I need you to forget, okay? And to be happy, alright? Be happy, for me. Don’t come here again. Just don’t come back. If you ever loved me, don’t come back.”

And then she takes her hand from him so quickly that his head drops backs harshly, making him see stars and he tries to scream for her but no sound comes out. The pain is back like a sledgehammer, his vision whites out for a second.

“No, please, please,” he whimpers. He can’t lose her, not again. He can’t lose her when he _just_ got her back! What the hell is going on?! Why would she leave him? “Tessa, come back.”

 

But there is no answer, there’s nothing. Not even the echo of her footsteps. She’s gone. She’s gone and he can’t move. And Tessa Virtue is alive. And she left him in a cold empty alley lying on trash bags. But she’s alive. She’s alive. 

 

_She’s alive._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you want to yell about this one on twitter, please tag #whereonthisearthfic so I can find you and love up on ya. *-*


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> KIM continues to be a rockstar beta-champ!! FAIRWINDS09 continues to be an amazing sounding board and constant support and I couldn't be more grateful to them and to you for the feedback and all the love. You make my days on a regular basis.
> 
> Thank you! Always.

**FOUR**

 

On the first night of his stay, it took Scott the first three minutes of his first shower in his hotel ensuite to figure out that the red marked tab is actually for the cool and the blue one for the hot water. He’s glad that he knows this the morning after his world turned upside down. He turns the red side on full throttle and yelps and shakes under the icy stream. He’s got one hand on the tiles to hold himself up. Anything to keep standing and get awake. It’s somewhere around noon and he’s slept maybe four hours. He doesn’t fully remember how he got back to the hotel or into bed but he vaguely knows it took about three ibuprofen for his splitting headache until he was even able to lie down. 

 

Not that he fell asleep anywhere close to that time. He lay in bed staring at the ceiling, unable to think a single straight thought. The gravity of reality had pushed his body flat against the mattress but his mind was in seventy places at once. When he woke up, he wasn’t sure that she had really kissed him, was actually rather convinced he had made that up. But he knows it was real that he saw her, that she’s alive. That Tessa Virtue is in the same city as him, in one piece and breathing. In the shower, he takes a deep breath and tries to figure out what to do. _If you ever loved me, you won’t come back_ , she had told him. How could he, though? How can he go on and pretend that he’s not seen what he’d seen? How can he stand before a mountain of questions and content himself with never knowing the answers? Allow her to slip away into dust again, when for the first time in fourteen years, he can feel his own heart beat fully? It’s not going to happen. 

 

Tessa had always been the more stubborn one of the two of them but this isn’t a question of what movie to watch together or what brand of chocolate to buy for game night. This is the rest of his life and how he wants to spend it. And he refuses to spend it wondering what happened to her, now that he knows she didn’t die, didn’t cease to exist, now that he can actually ask her. He’s decided by the time he steps out of the shower, wide awake with adrenaline. He won’t stay away, can’t. She ought to know this. He won’t let her fade quietly into the night again, that’s simply not who he is, and if he hopes to survive this life, it’s not who he can afford to be. So he’ll get dressed and go back to the club, hope to meet her and he won’t leave before he knows everything. 

 

He pulls a pair of black jeans from his suitcase that are too warm for the weather but for some reason he doesn’t want to see her again wearing shorts and looking like a tourist, so it’s his best casual pants and a pressed, short-sleeved button up. He can’t do anything about the bags under his eyes but he combs his hair that’s decidedly too long now and gels it back so the locks won’t fall into his forehead the whole day. He looks presentable at the end of it, like he’s going to one of Catherine’s fancy brunches, and it’s all fine and dandy until the moment there’s a knock on his door and James’ voice calling his name. Shit. 

 

He completely forgot that he is here with his friends, that they have all kinds of debauchery planned for this trip, all of which involves him, and he can’t go anywhere with them today, not until he’s gone to see Tessa. He has got to come up with something and fast and in his rush, he simply rips his socks off again, works the skinny jeans up as far on his ankles as possible (which is not very) and takes the shirt off again in a hurry. 

“Just a second,” he calls into the direction of the door. He doesn’t touch his hair, figuring that the gel might pass for greasiness and wraps his whole duvet around his frame, covering him from head to toe until he goes to the door and opens it, trying to look pitiful.

“Hey, buddy,” James says and does a double take on his friend’s get-up. “You weren’t at breakfast.”

 

“Yeah, I’m, um,” Scott stammers. “I’ve been getting sick all night. Probably the shrimp I had yesterday. I haven’t slept a wink.”

James eyes him for a moment and Scott prays James doesn’t spend too much time scrutinising his hair or the fact that there is a nice shirt lying by the foot of his bed that Scott hasn’t worn on this trip so far. But then James nods and breathes regretfully.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “So you’re out for today?”

“I think so, yeah,” Scott replies, thanking his lucky stars that this is working. “I’m just gonna go back to bed. You guys have a great day. I’m sure I’ll be good as new tomorrow.”

“Sure you will. Feel better, Scottie,” James smiles and with that, takes his leave.

 

Scott waits nearly half an hour before he puts on his shoes and steals out of the hotel, hurrying into the first cab on the curb and asks to be taken to the club. He doesn’t waste too much time questioning his actions. _If you ever loved me_ , she’d said. Really, that should have told her enough. Of course he had loved her. He’s not entirely sure he ever stopped. Which is why staying away simply isn’t an option. Watching the city pass by, he ponders what to say to her, how to make his case, what best to ask to understand what the hell is happening. _Why did you leave? You were fifteen? Why can’t you tell me? Why can’t I tell anybody else? Why don’t you use your name? Why am I in danger? What did you get yourself into, T?_ It’ll be something like that, if he can get his mouth to work. Right now, it feels like cardboard and his head is still hurting faintly, clouding his thoughts.

 

It doesn’t matter. He will find the words once he sees her and he nearly forgets to pay the fare when they arrive because he can’t wait to move, to see her and get some answers. Fresh out of cash, he watches the cab drive off into the humid afternoon day and sets his sights on the entrance of the club. There’s no hostess out front, which isn’t really surprising, seeing as it’s two thirty. The thick velvet curtain is pushed to the side and Scott hopes for a wild moment that the door is just open but of course, it’s not, so he knocks. And knocks harder when there is no response.

 

“Te-,” he starts and stops himself. “Nikki! Nicola! Open up!” His quick loud raps echo through the street but no one comes. It’s fine, it was a long shot anyway. It’s a night club, there probably won’t be anybody here until much later. But he can wait. He’ll wait forever out here if he has to. He’s just given up on his assault on the door when it’s being ripped open. There’s a very tall and large, very face-tattooed, very dangerous looking Hawaiian man standing opposite him, looming and glaring.

 

“What do you want?” he barks and Scott staggers backward, honestly terrified. He knows what those teardrop tattoos on the other man’s cheeks mean and he isn’t inclined to become the reason for a new one. _Jesus_ , what crowd does Tessa hang out with these days? What the fuck is going on?

“I’m looking for Nikki,” he breathes, high-pitched and pathetic. “I’m...I really need to speak with her.”

“Oi, Nik,” the other man barks into the darkness behind him, turning on his heels instead of giving Scott another glance. “Your boyfriend’s here.”

Scott can hear a woman curse heavily somewhere in the back and at first he isn’t sure if it’s Tess because he can’t really recall her ever saying more than a tentative “shit” back in the day. It turns out that it’s indeed Tessa, though, because before he blinks next, she’s there, cheeks blazing and eyes wild and furious.

 

“What are you doing here?” she hisses sharply. “I told you to stay away. You need to leave.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” he manages. Seeing her like that in the daylight that’s streaming into the shadowy doorway makes his whole system short-circuit. She looks so different. And exactly the same. He still can’t believe she’s real, standing there in jogger shorts and an oversized white shirt, casual, touchable, _living._ “I’m not leaving,” he repeats dumbly, struck stupid by how grown-up she is, and how _there._ “I can’t—”

“Jesus, _fuck_ ,” Tessa exclaims and pulls him harshly by the arm. Real hands, real fingernails digging into his skin. “Get in. You can’t be seen out here.”

 

It takes a couple of seconds for his eyes to adjust to the lack of light inside, the door falling shut with a bang. Scott spends the long moment staring at her. And stares at her longer even, when her features come into focus again. He’s trying hard to reconcile the memories he’s had of her face from back then with what she looks like now, all a woman and so, so beautiful. Sure, she’s always been beautiful but she used to be a small, skinny girl, now she looks like she fell out of the pages of a magazine. His hand reaches up on its own accord, unable to stop before he has caught a strand of her long, flowing hair from her shoulder and rolls it gingerly between his digits. He’s mesmerised, no other way to say it. He’s still got her hair clasped in his grip when he looks up at her. She’s looking at him, brow furrowed. 

 

“Scott, you need to go,” she says, so softly, like she doesn’t even mean it.

“I’m not leaving without you,” he tells her, taking a step forward, fingers still twisted in her hair.

“Don’t be silly. Please,” she plucks his hand off and takes a step back and now she does seem to mean it, even if it costs her. “Please believe me, you’re in danger. I can’t protect you, you need to go.”

“Te—”

“Niki,” she snaps, looking behind her nervously.

“Niki,” he corrects himself, playing no real mind to her fake name, he only wants to make her listen. “Just talk to me? Okay? Just tell me what’s going on. I just want to understand. I thought you were...we all thought you were…”

“I am. Alright?” her voice is raised before she catches herself and takes another step back, creating distance. Her green eyes glimmer angrily, so vivid and immediate that it’s like he’s inches away from her face, even as she keeps walking backwards. “The girl you knew is gone. She can’t come back. _I_ can’t come back. And I can’t explain. Because it’s not safe. It’s already so, so reckless that you even came back here.”

 

“Yeah, well, that’s me, isn’t it?” he asks and remembers a lifetime of these standoffs with her. “ _Scott never thinks before he does anything, Ma. All he does is get me in trouble._ ” She had said that once as a kid, when she was about ten, and he’d made fun of how goody-two-shoes it had sounded long afterwards, quoting her back to herself at random intervals in their life together, precisely because she hated it when he did.

She remembers it, too. He can tell from the way she clenches her jaw tight, trying not to smile. “Don’t. Don’t make this harder than it needs to be,” she pleads.

 

“How could it be easier?” he follows her retreat, can’t let her back out further. He’s not letting her go this easily, not this time. “You’re telling me that I find out you’re...here and you’re alive after fourteen years and now I gotta _leave_? Just leave you here like it’s no thing and move on and forget that this happened? How could I?”

“Scott,” there’s worlds in his name the way she says it, but he’s caught on just hearing it again, tumbling from her lips like it has always been hers and she’s had it in her safe-keeping until they were reunited. He grabs her hand, has to. To feel her, to keep her there, to beg of her.

“Don’t send me away.”

“I need you to leave,” she grits out and won’t meet his eye.

“Please,” he enthuses, tugging at her arm. “I’m begging you, please.”

“God, Scott,” she exclaims, shaking him loose, throwing her arms up in hopeless exasperation. “ _Fuck._ What am I gonna do with you?” 

 

“Is there a problem here?” the face-tat man hollers, rumbling around the corner, likely alarmed by her expletive and the audible distress in her voice.

“No. No,” Tessa hurries, stepping into the space between him and the mountain guy. “I used to sleep with him, you get it.” Scott holds his breath, taken aback and honestly a little offended and hurt by her nonchalant tone, like she really means it, like he’s nothing to her. She ignores his flinching, her focus solely on the other man. “Felix, can you get me a car out back?”

“Sure,” the guy, Felix, says and then lowers his voice to a stage whisper that Scott very much still hears. “If you want me to get rid of him…”

“No, that’s fine. I’ll handle it,” Tessa promises and Felix stalks off again.

“A guy you slept with?” Scott asks her, trying to not sound as wounded as he feels.

“Well, it’s true,” she shrugs, piqued and defensive, and that’s his Tess alright. “What else was I supposed to say?”

He draws a blank there, mostly because he has no idea why she’s Niki here and what happened between her fifteenth and twenty-ninth year, so he really wouldn’t know. He’s way more focused on her calling a car, trying to figure out how to chase that down, potentially with a 120 kilo, ex-con with three prison kills on his heels.

 

Tessa is about to say something when Felix pops back in, gesturing to the club floor. “Car will be here in five,” he gruffs. “You gotta be at the harbour by four.”

“I know, thank you,” she says and Scott checks his watch habitually. It’s bordering on three pm now. “Alright, you’re coming with me,” Tessa declares, catching him off guard when she tucks at his elbow and pulls once, motioning him to follow her. At least he won’t be running after her cab today. At least he must still mean enough for her to not put him out on the street with a bashed in head again.

 

***

 

The inconspicuous town car snails through the afternoon traffic and before Scott can get a word in, Tessa holds out her phone to him, a row of text on her ‘notes’ app that reads: ‘Laugh like I’m showing you a funny picture,’ and he does as he continues reading: ‘Act normal, casual, no names.’ He understood and locks eyes with her for a second, so she’s aware. He still has no idea what’s going on but he mostly always did what she told him to do, so it’s not anything outrageously new now.

 

“So, how are you?” she asks him, holding his gaze.

“Good. How are you?” he sounds so stilted and rehearsed to himself, he cringes and has to look away.

“Tired, mostly. I missed you,” she says, knocking the breath out of his lungs, making him look up at her again, breathlessly. “Last week,” she adds, like an afterthought.

Scott tries to catch his breath, trying to read in her eyes if she’s playing pretend for their grim looking driver or if she really means to say that she missed him. All these years. She swallows hard and he knows. “I missed you too,” and it’s a damn feat that it doesn’t come out as a sob, it’s a close call. 

“You know I’ll be gone for a while now, right?” she goes on, saving him with that new piece of information from making a fool of himself, bawling in the back of a sketchy car in Honolulu. 

“Uh-huh,” he mutters. Where is she going? Is that really true? Or is she just making stuff up for the sake of the guy in the front who is eyeing him suspiciously every couple of minutes?

 

Everything puzzles him. Sitting next to her, studying her features, not done cataloguing every new line and sharper angle of her face, he realises that however well he knew her when they grew up together, he has no idea who this woman is. She’s a stranger now, everything she does and says is strange to him, except the _ways_ she does things and says them, the way her face scrunches up, the way her voice rises and falls like a melody he’s known by heart since he was a child. He needs to know what happened with about the same intensity as he dreads actually finding out. Something major must have happened either way, that would get her here, in another country, on an island, working in a strip club.

 

‘ _Fields of Gold_ ’ by Sting is playing softly on the radio and it lends itself pretty well to the general feel of unease and anticipation, a weird blend of emotions that carries him from the car into a dingy apartment building, where Tessa near well shoves him into a studio on the second floor. Tessa keeps checking behind her, as if she’s nervous anybody could see him with her on the balcony that spans the entire floor, doors and windows to the units side by side so it all looks like an old, decommissioned motel. Once he’s inside, she throws the door shut and hurries straight to an open suitcase on the bed, going back and forth between the bathroom, her closet at the other end of the room, and her luggage to mindlessly toss stuff inside.

 

Scott follows her move about with his eyes, registering that her room looks barely lived in, non-personal and spartan but still bright, mismatched and colourful, which is the biggest indicator that she never put her own touch on this place. Her taste had always been curated, even as a tween she had liked everything just so, in pastels and whites and crisp, like from a furniture catalogue. It’s beyond his mental capacity at the moment to fully grasp how weird it is to be standing there, like he’s just a guy in a friend’s apartment, watching her pack for a trip when really, this is likely the strangest situation he’s found himself in in his life and he’s still no closer to understanding how he got into it. Tessa keeps throwing stuff around in a hurry and he starts to suspect she’s doing it to stall, which he’s no longer inclined to let her do, not with the deadline Felix gave her looming closer by the minute.

 

“Tess?” he tries, making her pause, a shampoo bottle she just threw landing in her hard shell suitcase with a thud.

“I can’t tell you much,” she starts with no interlude because she knows what he wants. “For your own safety, okay? And you can’t say a word of this to anybody. Nobody,” she repeats for emphasis and then resumes her gathering of random items, placed in no particular order into her luggage, which, too, is strange for her. “Not your mom, not even _my_ mom. Ever. Can you promise me that?”

“I promise,” he says automatically, too tense to decide if he means it.

 

She waits, a baby blue bra in her hands that he thinks he might remember from a different lifetime and he forces himself to look at her face, watches her take a deep breath, and shove the underwear under a bunch of shirts in her suitcase. 

“So,” she finally starts, effectively making him stop breathing. “When I was fifteen I was approached by CSIS because I had access to information they didn’t, for reasons I can’t tell you. I was asked to gather more of that information and I did. They told me it was just going to be minor stuff, just tell them whatever I saw that seemed strange. They told me it could potentially be dangerous but it was the right thing to do, so I did it.”

 

She pauses, to make sure he’s still following. He isn’t sure if he is. Actually, he’s pretty sure that he _isn’t._ What?! The CSIS? The Canadian Security Intelligence Service?! Approached her when she was fifteen? What kind of weird parallel universe is this? Where a national intelligence agency would use a kid as a mole? And where? And what happened after?

 

“And I went a bit too far with it, I was reckless and stupid and they found me out,” she goes on, tentative in the face of his expression which he guesses is bordering on ridiculous. “Basically I was spying on people, dangerous people, and I never managed to get anything substantial enough to stop them. But they had a reason to stop me, do you understand? The agency couldn’t make a case against them but I had a target on my back, so they had to take me away. I went into witness protection. Immediately.”

 

They put her into what now?

 

“I didn’t get to say goodbye, to no one but my parents, they weren’t even allowed to tell my sister, my brothers, _you_ ,” she plows on, ignoring his double-take. He remembers Kate, holding him while he cried, trying to tell him to let Tessa go. Having a funeral when Scott would have never expected her to give up the search...that all makes way more sense suddenly. 

“I didn’t get to see anybody or explain,” Tessa continues, lost in her own memories. “I just had to disappear. They would’ve killed me, alright? They’re still looking for me. So no one can know. No one can know that I am alive and where I am. Because everyone who knows is in danger, too. You can not tell anybody that you saw me, do you understand?”

 

He nods, because no matter how fantastical it all sounds, her sense of urgency, and the fact that it’s Tessa he’s talking to, makes him believe every word she says. She never lied to him. And he knows in his heart that she would never have left home -and him- for anything less than a threat to her life.

“Can I ask a question?” he says as soon as he trusts himself to speak.

“Ask,” she tells him. “I might not answer.”

“What can I do to stop these people?” It’s really all he wants to know. She bites her lips over a small, sad smile.

“Nothing,” she says. “You need to go back to your life and...go back to normal. You need to not get involved.”

“But—“

 

“No,” she cuts in. “This isn’t your fight, Scott.”

“What, so I’m supposed to just accept that?” More animated than he thought he would be, he nearly leaps forward, into her space and she takes a step back. “That you have to live in a different country under a different name and work as a stripper?!”

“I’m not a stripper,” she says, incredulous, like she has no idea how he could have gotten _that_ outlandish idea. He scoffs involuntarily and earns himself a glare. Even those he missed more than he can say.

“Sure looked like it to me,” he remarks sheepishly.

 

“Scott,” she chides, and it’s his whole early teens wrapped up in her tone. “After I went into witness protection I couldn’t continue with ballet. I was never going to go anywhere because when you dance and you work wherever, there will be photos of you. There can’t be photos of me anywhere public. So I had to quit. I finished school in Yukon and I had no idea what to do with my life.” 

 

She’s picked up packing again, speaking conversationally, like she’s just going over something mundane, like her life hasn’t been like something straight out of a television drama. “I was either going to be stuck there forever or figure out what I could do that would allow me to stay hidden but leave that godforsaken middle of nowhere they stuck me with. So I reached out to the CSIS and I got into their training program. I was never meant for the field, you know?” 

 

He watches her move, trying to process what she’s telling him, that she started working for the government, for the agency. Slowly, the pieces start clicking into place. He feels like he’s finally getting some footing back, that he can begin to understand this.

“But then they needed someone who looked young for a covert operation in a high school in Vancouver and I fit the bill,” she continues.

 

“Like 21 Jump Street?” he asks and the smile she can’t fight, hits him square in the chest, so much so that he has to sit down on her worn out couch behind him, eyes remaining glued to hers.

“Yeah. Like that, just a little less comedic,” she says. “I’m not all that funny these days. I guess my sense of humour kind of withered a bit without you… Anyway. It just went from there. I started doing undercover work here and there, nothing major mostly, just a couple of weeks one year and then nothing for a long time. I usually just sit in an office all day. But then they needed someone with a dance background for this international joint operation. Spearheaded by the CIA. In Hawaii. They chose me. So now I’m here.”

 

Scott takes a deep breath. It all sounds incredibly crazy but at least it’s answers, it’s more than he ever hoped he would get in his life. But Tessa doesn’t see to share the relief he feels about it. 

“I’ve been working on this for a year and your timing is actually fantastically horrible because it’s all going down _now_ ,” she tells him, wringing her hands. “Next week is what I’ve been working towards, next week, we can get these bastards I’m pretending to work for.” She sits down in her bed, settling for the first time since they arrived. “I am leaving today to finish this and then I’ll move on. Back to desk duty. But this has to work. And I can’t be worrying about you or my family being in danger because you found me, okay? I need you to be safe.” 

 

Tessa leans in, like she wants to climb into his brain and make him understand, force him to see things her way. She can probably tell that every fiber of his being is fighting it. She needs him to forget this ever happened and that’s something he absolutely can’t do. She tries anyway. 

“That’s why I need you to leave _now_ and never tell a soul what I told you, alright?” she implores. “Because if something ha—“

Scott is fixed on Tessa’s eyes when a blaring _boom_ splits the air between them and behind him, the window bursts with a blow into a million pieces and they both jump in shock. He has no idea what happened, other than the fact that there is a hole in the wall opposite of him where before, there’d been none. Tessa cowers beside her bed, her eyes wide in shock. It’s a split second later when he realises he’s been screaming out in his sudden terror. It’s cut off by another explosion and Tessa drops forward to the ground. 

 

“Fuck,” she cries and inches towards him. “Shit. Scott, get down! Get down!”

She scrambles for his hand, reaches his arm first and yanks at it harshly. They’re being shot at, he realises, and the epiphany makes him slow and clumsy as she tries to get him to move.

“What the—”

 

“Did you tell anybody that you saw me?” she screams at him, when the next bullet hits the wall. The wall she is currently pulling him towards, making him crawl after her. It’s the only way to escape. They have to escape. Someone is trying to kill them.

“No!” he yells back, without really hearing what she asked in the first place. He’s a bit too busy trying to not get shot, to think through the panic. A fucking futile endeavour. It’s all a blur, his blood rushing past his ears drowning out everything else. Everything zeroes in on Tessa, like she’s his lifeline. He grapples for her hand, has no idea how he’s even moving, only that the next thing he knows, Tessa is kicking the door of her bathroom shut behind them and rips a wooden shelf from its place at the wall to block the way. The contents of the shelf, perfume bottles and makeup containers, fall and break open on the floor, splintering apart, making a mess as she urges him forward, to the little window above the toilet. 

“Scott, did you tell _anybody_?” she demands again, hysterically, yanking the window open as the slew of gunshots stops briefly, heavy footsteps echoing from her studio. 

 

Someone is fucking trying to kill them! Who the fuck is trying to kill them? Fuck. _Fuck, Jesus, fucking shit._

 

“No,” he says. But then he remembers, his heart sputters in alarm. “I just,” he exhales, the memory sharpening. “I sent my parents an e-mail.”

“They found me,” Tessa mutters, horrified, still for a second, before a new shot makes them both flinch and the lock of the door bursts away, the bullet splitting a floor tile clean in half. The air smells like Chanel Number Five and sulfur. “Move!” she orders and grabs his shirt violently, shoves him towards the window so he gets the message to climb out.

“Tess, I’m so—,” he tries, as soon as he’s on the fire escape outside and reaches for her to get her out of there. Whoever is behind them is rattling at the door, getting closer.

“We don’t have time for sorry,” she screeches and pushes past him, grabbing his hand in the process to pull him after her. “ _Move!_ Shit, goddammit.”

 

 _This is the day I die_ , he thinks, his whole system flooded with dread, enough to render him immobile. But then she scratches the flesh of his hand with her fingernails like tiny knives and pulls harder and his head switches off, falling into obedience. 

 

 _Move_ , she said. So he does.

 

She drops his hand when she starts climbing up the fire escape and the door rattles harshly in the bathroom behind Scott, which makes him pick up his speed, hard on Tessa’s heels as she moves swiftly. Up, up, up. It’s four more flights and under normal circumstances, with the sun beating down on them relentlessly, he’d be complaining, out of breath but there is nothing of that now. Trained on survival, he keeps pressing forward like an animal in flight, and doesn’t dare look behind him. He just watches Tessa, just tries to keep up as they reach the roof and she starts into a sprint. Scott follows, putting each step where she put it before and never stops, not even when she jumps from the roof two meters down onto a second one. Not when she kicks in a door at the far end of that roof either, with impressive force ,and she holds it open for him to slip into and slams it shut again. She broke the lock, so as soon as a gust of wind catches it, it’ll blow open but for now, it stays closed, hopefully long enough to conceal their escape route.

 

Long enough for them to scale down the bleak, moldy staircase they’re in now, hurrying down as fast as their bones allow, short of breath and running on terror. Tessa bursts out of the staircase on the ground level first, heaving and rushing through an otherwise empty and grungy looking lobby, reaching for his hand again. Scott still hasn’t dared to look or even listen behind him, so he has no idea if they’re still being chased. Tessa doesn’t linger to find out either, she just keeps running, his hand in hers, urging him on. It’s her who flags a cab down half a second after they’re out on the street, too, and she’s the one who yells at the driver to take them to the harbour stat and to run any red lights he possibly can.

 

“Shit,” she breathes hotly, the second the car drives away from the curb, bending down low, her head in her hands. “This can’t be happening right now. Shit, shit, _shit._ ”

“I’m so sorry,” he whimpers, cowering down too, so he can catch a glimpse of her face. She doesn’t even seem to listen.

“You need to go home,” she murmurs toward her feet. “Back to Canada. Right now. If they saw you with me, I… _Fuck._ I need to get you to my handler. He’ll know what to do. You gotta come with me now. Alright?” She’s rambling, voice shaking and barely more than a whisper. “I need you to come with me to my handler. The agency, they can...they’ll protect you. They’ll figure out if someone knows that you know. Maybe it’s not too late.”

 

“Tess, I don’t know how...I’m so sorry, I had no idea,” he tries. “I didn’t—”

“It’s alright. Just let me think,” she cuts in, sits up and finally looks at him again, her face is flushed red, her features set in trepidation. “I need to get you on this fucking boat.” She looks out the window, biting her lip and Scott is momentarily distracted by the intensity of his heart hammering against his ribcage, like a trapped bird, and he thinks he might have peed a little trying to get away. Which would surely be embarrassing if he wasn’t so damn happy to still have only just the normal number of holes to leak from. 

 

“Okay, when we get there, just follow my lead, alright?” Tessa says, ripping his attention back to her. “Just say yes to everything I say. We’re going with the bad men, so you’re gonna have to...act like you don’t care about doing bad stuff, right? Can you do that?”

“I, uh, I think so,” Scott replies, like an automaton, if a jittery and twitchy one.

“Just...just follow my lead. Then it’ll be fine,” she promises and turns away, staring ahead as the cab barrells on toward the water line. “We’ll be fine, we’ll be fine,” she babbles, as if it’s a mantra, as if she hopes to make herself believe it. “It’ll be fine.”

 

Scott works his hand along the leather seat, smearing it with his cold sweat, to find hers clenched to a tight fist next to her thigh and reaches for her with his pinky and middle finger. She takes it, like she had a million times before a million years ago, and squeezes. She’s still moving her lips, breathing the words more than saying them. 

 

“It’ll be fine,” she exhales. “It’ll be fine. I’ll keep you safe.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fair warning...I will leave for a month of work on the Canary Islands on Wednesday, I might get one more of this out until then but probably not a new What's Love because those chapters are longer...but nothing is abandoned, just paused due to a 6 day work week and crappy internet :)


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello friends! Have a travel chapter. This basically brings us from the beginning of our story, our act 1, to the second act, where all the action hopefully happens. Mind you, I am very busy at work and will only be able to work at a slow pace but I am not abandoning this or What's Love, I still very much plan on finishing those.
> 
> I hope you like this and thank you so much for your patience!!

**FIVE**

 

By the time the cab drops them off at the private harbour on the outskirts of town, Scott feels numb. It’s not just a feeling of heaviness that descended on him, it’s more the sensation of being immersed in a thick gel, or amber, like a prehistoric dragonfly trapped in golden resin for perpetuity. He can’t move but when Tessa tucks on his elbow, he does anyway. He follows her lead on autopilot, pays no mind to the fancy, huge yachts left and right or the salty breeze coming from the ocean, ruffling the collar of his sweat-soaked dress shirt. All he can do is focus on the ponytail Tessa has worked her hair into on the curb and match his stride to its bouncing. This is absolutely insane. As if she heard his thoughts, Tessa snaps his hand from his side and takes it in hers. Like he’s been conditioned to years and years ago, his head turns on its own to look down at her, meeting her determined gaze and for a second, it’s like she’s thirteen again and he’s teaching her how to skate backwards, the dainty ballerina dead set on learning how to find her way around the rink like a pro, just because. 

 

It’s that same grit painting her features now and that’s the only reason Scott finds the strength to keep walking when Felix comes into view as the landing stage makes a sharp right turn for the biggest vessels yet. The 1.90m giant stands in front of a yacht that could as well be called a _ship_ and his eyes turn to slits when he sees that Tessa, that _Nikki_ , brought company.

“You’re late,” is the first thing he says when they’re close enough to hear him. “What is that clown still doing here?” Scott half wants to stop and just jump into the water, God knows it would be a warmer and less frightening welcome than Felix cold, appraising glare.

 

“I know, I’m sorry. We ran into a little bit of trouble,” Tessa says, not missing a beat. “See, my boyfriend over here owes some people money and they were waiting for us at my place. So I had to leave my stuff behind.”

“I thought he wasn’t your boyfriend,” Felix says and looks about as sceptical as Scott is perplexed. It doesn’t last long though, because it makes sense. They would have to be close in order for Tessa to be bringing him, especially if it’s really sketchy stuff she is investigating. So anything below a lover doesn’t make sense.

“You know how it is,” Tessa continues and shrugs. “Give me a bad boy and I’m all in.”

Felix seems to accept that, even if it doesn’t look like he accepts Scott yet. “So what do you expect us to do with him?”

“Well, he needs money and we have a job opening, don’t we?” she challenges. “We still need that hacker, right? You’re looking at him.” 

_Wait, what?_

 

“He don’t look like a hacker,” Felix says and Scott tries his best to follow. “He looks like an accountant.”

“I’m not an accountant,” Scott hears himself say and immediately regrets it. If looks could kill, Felix could add another teardrop to those already on his cheek. Why the fuck did he even say anything? He managed not to get murdered so far on this no good, very bad day, why would he get testy with a grumpy, ex-con flesh-mountain now?

“Great,” Felix grumbles, fixing Scott with a look for a moment and then turns to Tessa. “Why is he talking to me?”

“Be nice, Felix,” Tessa admonishes and loops her arm around Scott’s—something that is probably supposed to look intimate but really comes off more as a protective move, Mama-bear-style, Scott thinks. “He means a lot to me,” Tessa goes on. “And he really needs the money.”

“I don’t like this,” Felix says. “Hey, tiny man, do you have any reference for the boss? I can’t just give him a job without knowing he’s good for it.”

“Come on, you know me,” Tessa says before Scott can even take a breath to brace for making some shit up. “Have I ever been wrong?”

“Not really,” Felix concedes.

 

“So,” she inclines her head triumphantly. “I promise you, he’s one of the best. Just...ask around for Chid, you’ll see he knows what he’s doing. Plus, I’m vouching for him. But we just really need to get going.”

“On _your_ recommendation, Nik,” Felix says and Scott can tell he’s letting her have it.

“On my recommendation,” Tessa agrees and smiles up at him gratefully, bright and dazzling. “Thanks!” It’s incredible how simple this looks, how secure she is, how assertive, how she just went in there with an agenda and wrapped this creepy, humongous dude right around her pale, delicate finger.

“If you need clothes you can just go and grab some stuff from the master bedroom, there should still be a bunch of shit the boss don’t need in there,” Felix says, now all business and almost as if Scott wasn’t there in the first place. “We’re going from storage straight to the party, so you better give your half-man boyfriend something to wear that doesn’t look like he’s working for a damn bank.”

Tessa laughs heartily and Scott thinks that it’s probably smart to do the same but his attempt at a chuckle comes out breathless and pathetic and so he stops, taking Felix’ scrunched up nose as his cue to keep his mouth shut and his head down as Tessa takes his hand and pulls him up the gangway onto the stern of the yacht. 

 

The ship is massive, the gangway leading onto just the bottom level of the stern, stairs lead up on either side to the second level where there is a huge, turquoise swimming pool and a stunning view up to the next two levels, the first one revealing a lounge area with couches and a bar and above another deck with an honest to god helicopter sitting on it. Scott thinks this is what Forbes refers to as a super yacht. Tessa struts ahead as if it’s the most mundane thing she can imagine. He wants to talk to her about it, the sheer scale and luxury of this whole thing but then his sound mind comes back to him and he remembers how Tessa got him onto this ship in the first place.

“I haven’t hacked anything since I was eighteen, T. You know that, right?” he murmurs. “Are you crazy?”

“Shh,” she hisses and digs her fingertips into the soft flesh of his hand that she’s still holding. “Will you be quiet?”

 

Scott holds his tongue as she nudges him up to the second deck, past the bar and through a lush set of sitting rooms, down a minimalist, stylish corridor and into what he supposes is the master suite, decked in furs and muted, rich textures like leather and dark grey velvet.

“Ears everywhere. The only place without cameras is this room,” Tessa tells him, looking around the space with slits for eyes all the same, as if to check that there is not a new hidden camera somewhere. “You’re never gonna even get your hands on a computer.”

“What name did you give them for me?” He asks, faintly remembering that Tessa told Felix to check out a hacker’s alias. Those aliases he remembers well from his high school forays into hacking, they were your trademark, your claim to fame because faces and any other crucial information obviously had to stay hidden. His name had been ScooMo, which in hindsight is terribly obvious but then again, Scott never did anything overly illegal with his skills, the worst thing he ever did was hack the London police department to find out what they knew about Tessa’s disappearance but all he’d found was that they barely looked for her after the initial sweep of the area and that no suspects or even witnesses had been questioned. Knowing what he knows now, about the witness protection and the people who still want to hurt her, he supposes it’s not as surprising as it had been back then. That the police would just drop the case like a hot potato and move on. 

 

“Chid,” Tessa says and Scott startles, having forgotten what they were talking about. Tessa sees it. “That’s the alias I gave him. Chid is one of our recruits. I was supposed to introduce him to the group but if they think he looks like you, it doesn’t make much of a difference. He won’t be on site then but I guess that’s okay…” She looks out of the window at the far wall as the yacht starts moving, starting forward and slowly inching out of the marina.

“I’m sorry that I messed up that plan,” Scott mutters, trying to stay focused on what she said, finding his concentration wavering, fuzzy around the edges as the mainland gets away from him, trapping him on this vessel, leaving his real life in the rearview, seeming almost like an old memory. And that’s scary as all hells.

“Don’t be silly,” Tessa says, shaking her head. “Had to be done. And don’t worry, as soon as I can, I’m getting you to the safe house and my handler will take care of you.” She pauses and regards him for a moment before she goes on. “I just hope I can get you out first thing off the boat but I might not be able to.” Tessa turns inward for a second, walks a couple of paces and speaks to herself more than him next. “If I can’t and you’ll have to come with to storage…that’s not for the faint hearted.”

“What do you mean?” he asks, curious, despite his better judgement.

“I’m supposed to inspect the merchandise before heading on over to my boss’ villa for this party,” Tessa replies, her voice quiet.

 

“And what are these people selling?” he asks, taking a step in her direction. He’s not even sure he wants to know but if there is a chance that he’ll have to come with, he thinks it’s better to be prepared than to get a bad surprise and blow the whole thing up. “Drugs? Weapons?”

“Among other things. But mostly…,” Tessa starts and then backs away from the window, moves further into the room until her legs connect with the king-sized bed and she sinks down on it, ashamed, as if her own hands were dirty. “People, essentially,” she says, hollow. “Emilio, my boss, he’s pretty much the lynchpin of human trafficking between Libya, Eastern Europe and North America. Nearly every modern house slave and a good number of girls working the streets in the big cities came through here in the last decade.” 

 

Scott sits down too. It’s not that he’s overly surprised. Bad shit happens in the world, that much is a given, and he is well aware that human trafficking is a thing and that someone ought to fight it and take the bastards out but did that someone really have to be Tessa Virtue? Did life really have to take that path for her? To rip her from her teenage years and set her on a path where she would end up here? En route to Maui, to look at ‘merchandise’ – to deal with people who talk about human beings as if they were sacks of flour. Couldn’t it have been different? Have her become a ballerina like she wanted? Or keep skating with him like she had started to think about, be his partner on ice and in life? Couldn’t fate have kept them together? 

 

“I’ve been working for a year to get into the business,” Tessa continues when it’s apparent that Scott won’t offer up any commentary because he’s lost in the _what-if_ s. “To work my way up.”

“I’d imagine that would take longer,” he says, not really following.

“Usually it does,” she shrugs. “I’m pretty good at my job.”

And that makes him perk up and give her a look. Tessa’s face hardens immediately.

“I’m not sleeping with him,” she says, defensive, and Scott isn’t even sure that’s what he was trying to insinuate but he’s somehow glad to have the answer all the same. “But I pretty quickly rose through the ranks in the strip club, because I’m good at scheduling. And the girls trust me. Many of the people the organisation has stowed away on Maui still think they’re going to be getting working permits and start a new life in America or Canada…I’m there to make them keep believing that for as long as possible. My job is basically to lie to them and to organise the auction so that they all go without a fuss with their buyers.” 

“Their _buyers_ ,” Scott repeats dumbly. “That sounds insane.”

“I know. We’re trying to stop them. I hate this, you know I do. I died a little bit every day that I’ve been doing this but I need to do it. We need to get these people and take them down, we need to hold them accountable, to...put an end to this,” she says and catches his eye. He can’t say anything, he tries to, but the sound gets stuck in his throat. “What?”

 

“This whole thing sounds insane,” he mutters after a while. “This whole day is…I mean. You’re…alive and working for the CIA? And someone shot at us.” That happened. That happened not too long ago. “Oh God. Someone shot at us.” Scott’s voice breaks as the memory returns, vivid and startling and suddenly he’s back in her flat, like a flash, so fast and so intensely, it would be enough to give him whiplash if he could process that right. Hearing the shot, feeling the adrenaline, his heart rate spiking. He can smell the sulfur, he can feel his pulse quicken, his mouth dry up, panic rising. “I led them right to you. I led the people who want you dead straight to your door.” He can’t breathe. They’re coming for them, they’re coming for Tessa. He can’t move. “I’m so, oh _fuck_ , T, I’m so sorry, I can’t…,” he chokes on his own tongue, flailing, gasping for air, for purchase. He’s stuck, he’s in her apartment, crouched on the floor, he can’t move, they’re coming. There’s no air, he needs to breathe. He keels over, his vision whitening out as he stares at the beige carpet under his feet, his head almost between his knees. There’s no oxygen, _fuck_ , God, why can’t he _breathe_?

 

“Shh,” Tessa hums from somewhere in the distance, a warm hand trailing up and down his back reassuringly. “It’s alright, Scott. You’re having a panic attack.”

“Yeah, no shit,” he stammers, trying to get back some air into his lungs, to regain control of his capacities.

“Just…just breathe, okay?” she tries, sounding concerned.

“I can’t, I c—,” he’s heaving now. His stomach turns. “Fuck, I’m gonna be…”

That’s the last thing he says before he starts to his feet and pounces forward, to the only other door that is not the exit and stumbles headfirst into the ensuite bathroom, darting toward the toilet and barely makes it in time to empty what little he had in his stomach into the bowl. He’s retching by the time Tessa crouches beside him, rubbing her palm soothingly over his back.

 

After he’s done and has sat down, she flushes the toilet first and hands him some toilet paper to wipe his mouth after. “Are you gonna be okay?” she asks, her brow furrowed. 

“What choice do I have?” he challenges, sounding more harsh than he intended but then again, he did just hurl out the entire contents of his gastric tract, so some slack should be cut for his tone. 

“Alright,” Tessa sighs, apparently agreeing and gets up from the floor. “Just…rest, for a while, yeah? Take a nap, relax. We’ll be here a while. Takes three and a half hours to get to Maui. Try and get some sleep. I’ll put some clothes out for you.” She turns to leave and he watches her reach for the door handle and then stop herself and turn around. “Scott?”

“Huh?”

“I’m sorry, too. I never wanted you to get mixed up in this. You least of all people,” she says, looks away and then back at him, as if it costs her a little. “But I’m really happy to see you. I mean it. I missed you. So much.”

“I missed you, too,” he says, his insides churning again, but for different reasons this time. “I’m…I’m really glad you’re not dead.”

Tessa nods and smiles, somewhat sadly. And then leaves him to his own devices.

 

He can’t really tell the time, how long it takes for him to get off of the floor, gurgling the heavily chlorinated water from the tab to get the taste of sick out of his mouth and fall onto the bed, curling up and staring at the horizon outside the window. He tries to nap, he really does but it’s impossible to rest. After tossing and turning for a long time, he gives up, sits and digs his phone out of his jeans pocket and dials.

“Hey, buddy, so…I’m at the, uh, hospital,” he says right after James picks up and greets him cheerfully. “‘M feeling really bad. Probably going to go home,” he continues and doesn’t let his soon-to-be brother-in-law get a word in. “But you guys finish the trip, alright? Just…call Cathy so she doesn’t worry. It’s nothing serious. I’ll be back in London soon.”

“What?” James’ voice comes tinny and worried from the speaker. “I don’t understand.”

“Um, yeah, they’re calling me in,” Scott says, panicking again but only slightly. He’s such a terrible liar. “I gotta go, alright?”

“Wait, Scott, what’s going—”

He hangs up, his phone hot in his hand when Tessa comes in, wearing a light, flowery summer dress and a solemn expression that changes into chagrin when she sees the device in his grip.

 

“What are you doing?” She snaps and starts moving towards him.

“Nothing, I just–,” he hurries, sensing instantly that he is in trouble.

“You can’t use that,” she says, coming closer with long strides. “Scott, if they’re monitoring your phone…Gimme that.”

“But–,” he tries to argue but it’s no use. Like back in the days, Tessa is a freight train when she wants to be and she can’t be stopped.

“No, hand it over!” She orders and Scott can’t help but obey her and watch as she walks over to the bathroom, puts the phone in the sink and lets water wash over it, ruining it. “Tessa!” he argues, stumbling out of the bed to try and stop the damage that’s already been done.

 

“It’s not safe,” she tells him, coming back with red cheeks. “And you have to stop calling me that. Okay? If anybody hears, we’re both toast. You gotta trust me, alright? Do you trust me?”

“I don’t…,” he doesn’t finish the thought, just because of the way she looks at him, immediately hurt, like he’s struck her. “I don’t know you anymore, T-…Nik.” He sinks back onto the bed, his bones heavy and his lungs tight. “I don’t know _what_ to think. I’ve been shot at. Chased through the fucking city…I have no idea what the fuck is going on.”

“I’ve told you everything I can,” Tessa says, then gnaws on her bottom lip and walks over to him, breathing deeply before sitting down next to him. “I’m just trying to get you out of this.”

“I just don’t get how this is so goddamn easy for you,” he tries explaining. She feels so small beside him but at the same time, she’s everywhere. She’s really there, she’s really back. He still can’t believe it. And she is so different. “You didn’t even…flinch when we were running.”

“I’ve been in the game for a while,” she says and sounds tired. “I told you.”

“It’s just a lot to process. I’m…this isn’t my life, alright?” he tells her, trying to make her understand that it’s not her, not her fault. That it’s just the situation that he can’t really begin to fathom. “I’m a small town figure skating coach, a damn _nobody_ for god’s sake. This is some Jason Bourne shit, I’m not…equipped to deal with this. I’m kinda freaking out here, okay?”

“I know.” She pauses, considers him but before he can get lost in the gorgeous green of her eyes, she scoots back on the bed, sandals on her feet and all and holds out her arms. “C’mere,” she says. “Come on, it’ll help.”

 

Somehow it’s strange to heed her call but he does it anyway, as if he’s being steered, crawls on his knees to reach her, to lay down beside her and put his head on her chest like a small boy would cuddle up to his mother. Her hand finds its way into his hair, massaging his scalp, turning his locks between her fingers, soothing him with every little touch and Scott’s lungs expand fully for the first time since he got up in the morning. A morning that seems like it’s been ages since then.

“I know it’s a lot,” Tessa murmurs. “But it’ll be over soon. We’ll get you home safe and you can go back to your life and forget this ever happened.” 

Involuntarily, he tightens his grip around her. “I don’t want to forget. I just…I want it to not be fucked up.”

“I’m afraid it is what it is,” she sighs, sounding deeply regretful. “You just have to trust me.”

“I’m trying,” he promises, keeping the tighter grip on her, because it feels like she’s already drifting away from him and that thought scares him even more than everything else he’s been through since he found her again. 

“I’m different, I know that. But I’ll always…,” she pauses, just a fraction of a second but he hears it. “ _Care_ about you.” He exhales, his brain shouting something about love at him that he’s trying to ignore. “I’ll always look out for you, I promise,” she goes on. “Just breathe and try to relax. I’m right here.”

 

Scott allows himself the luxury of sinking down further onto her body, to feel the warmth of her chest against his cheek, to listen to her heartbeat —slightly faster than normal, he deems— and to indulge in the sheer wonder that it is having her in his arms again when he thought he’d never get the chance to. It’s her heartbeat that ends up lulling him to sleep, a steady, sweet thrum against his temple, in time with their breathing as it syncs up and becomes one and the universe zeroes in on just that, just them, reunited, together. As it should have been. However long later, he wakes up startled that she isn’t wrapped up in his arms anymore.

 

“Hey, sleepyhead,” she says from where she sits on the couch in the corner with a magazine watching him. “Feel better?”

“No,” he tells her honesty. “But I’ll be fine.”

“You still make those little sounds when you fall asleep,” she says, looking at some place beside his head and Scott can feel his ears grow hot. 

“I’ve been told,” he mutters. Catherine had noticed that a month into their relationship, that he made these high-pitched little noises when he settled in at night and it reminded him back then that Tessa had used to make fun of him for it when they started spending the night a million years ago, only to later admit that she loved the sounds and found him incredibly adorable. That’d been the only time he’d ever been fine with being called ‘adorable’. Tessa seems to remember too, because she switches gears, almost like they’d burned each other from a distance, and points to a pile of clothes next to her.

“Put those on,” she says with a small rasp. “I talked to Felix. I have a window to get you to my handlers but you’re gonna have to come with to that other thing first.” She looks at him all grave and gets up, this air of take-no-shit about her that is startlingly new. “And it’ll…it’ll be…well, it’s gonna be shitty and terrible but you need to blend in, okay? Do you think you’ll be able to pull that off?”

“Blend in how?” he asks.

“Okay, listen,” Tessa starts. “Here’s what you’re gonna do.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thoughts? I'm really happy to be back!

**Author's Note:**

> Thoughts? I am always so very grateful about feedback!


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